Party in the hood

I stare Mark down. "What's with the pink shirt?"

"It's not pink," he says. "It's mustard."

I'm a little color blind at night, especially when drunk and hungover, two states most people can't achieve at the same time. But I know the difference between pink and mustard.

"Yeah, right. What's with the pink shirt, you fag."

Mark's a little homophobic (translation: he thinks I might be gay), so I like to stick it to him every once in awhile.(Poor choice of words.)

The night before, I had experienced one of the best New Year's celebrations of my life. My girlfriend and I took a city-sponsored shuttle from south Austin to downtown, and while I was suspicious, we only suffered a ten-minute wait and everyone was polite, including the cops. When the bus let us off, we headed to meet some friends at the Lavaca Street Bar, somewhat of a yuppie bar, but not oppressively so. (They allowed me in, after all.)

We got to Lavaca Street at nine o'clock and a miracle happened. Only five people were in the room, so we were going to get a seat in a bar on New Year's Eve. That's a first.

Tom and Jamie showed up -- one of two couples we planned to meet there -- and pretty soon the Guinness flowed, the Stones blared on the jukebox and CNN shined silently on the TV. Thirty minutes later,the next couple showed up, Ron and Val, and then everyone put on a stupid party hat (I guess that's what the $5 cover was for) while I competed with Jamie for the title of Most Obnoxious Person in the room.

She started it. Jamie got a hold of some kind of pseudo firecrackers that make a popping noise when you throw them against something hard. She threw a few at me, but nothing happened (she didn't aim low enough). But she threw a few at the table next to ours and they popped excellently.

No injuries.

Avoiding the poppers, I found myself leaning against the bar watching CNN, as I had all day long. When I woke up on December 31, I had turned on one TV to ABC's Peter Jennings and the other TV to CNN. Then I moved to the computer to check e-mail for Y2K reports. Tim from New Zealand weighed in first and assured me everything seemed to be running smoothly on his end of the world. Tap water and electricity all around, he reported.

After checking mail, I turned my attention to CNN and watched nothing but good news roll in. Everything had worked in New Zealand, Japan and Australia. Then the scene switched to Moscow, the fuckin' Y2K yardstick of all yardsticks. I half expected I'd soon be watching a midnight blackout, broken up by Russian missiles screaming through the night toward the U.S. like Roman candles on speed. But no, Moscow rolled over with no incident and that's when I knew what I had figured all the time -- the Y2K bug was a hoax.

A CNN reporter interviewed a Russian gentleman during the fireworks display. "We think the Y2K bug was a conspiracy started by Bill Gates to make him rich." After the sound bite, Yuri made out with a bottle of vodka.

But as I watched CNN at the Lavaca Street Bar, they did a cutaway to Granbury, Texas, and there's your Y2K fuck-up of the day, ladies and gentlemen. CNN was covering Granbury, Texas? What the fuck? Where are they going to cut to next, Fresno, California? Tumwater, Washington? Portland, Oregon?

After one more round of beers and a quick shot of Jack Daniels for me, the three couples (I keep mentioning couples only to point out I had a date on New Year's eve) hit the streets at 11 p.m. The plan was to move close enough to the stage on Congress Avenue so we could get a glimpse of Lyle Lovett on stage. My thoughts: fuck Lyle Lovett. I just wanted to see the laser show.

It turned out Lyle was for real, but the laser show was a bust with nothing more than Batman-like search lights painting the buildings with company logos -- Schlotzky's Deli, KVUE, House of Blues.

House of Blues? There's no House of Blues in Austin. A portent of things to come? I doubt it. The real blues club, Antone's, would no doubt host a benefit, pass out matches and gasoline, then burn the House of Blues to the ground like a Methodist church in Alabama.

Somehow we lost Tom and Jamie in the crush of the crowd, so the remaining four of us settled due east of the stage with barely enough elbowroom to rattle the party favors we'd pilfered from the bar. Five minutes later, the countdown began. Ten, nine, eight, eight-and-a-half (are they fuckin' with us?) seven, six, five... you get the idea. Midnight comes, we yelled like hockey fans, I kissed my girlfriend and then we switched. Ron kissed Karin, while I kissed Val.

Ooooooooo. Middle-aged swinging. Radical.

So the next day, I find myself at Slaid and Karen's housewarming party, ridiculing Mark's shirt and drinking too many free beers. This marks my third drunken night in a row (I spent Thursday with Mike the botanist hanging out at a bar called Deep Eddy, so we could catch wood from the bartender, a tall blond number named Inger, but I can't get into that right now).

Slaid and Karen had just moved from a podunk little town to a ghetto in east Austin, so I dress appropriately ­- trench coat, wool hat (which reads "Idiot" over the front) and dark shades. I figure since I'm hanging out at a white couple's home in a black neighborhood, dressing Mexican might be a suitable compromise.

Besides, I look Mexican anyway.

Slaid's a recording artist with Rounder Records -- an indie singer-songwriter label -- so a lot of musicians are invited, as well as Slaid's producer, Gurf, who I glom onto once I discover he has also lived in Los Angeles. We have a long, intense conversation about LA, the music business and Sandra Bernhard, not one word of which I can now remember. I must have been doing all the talking.

Then I ask Slaid a question that has been stewing in my mind: What's the ontological argument? Slaid, who majored in philosophy, patiently explains the concept, while I lean over in rapt earnestness wearing my "Idiot" dunce cap. Where's a camera when you need one?

Simply put, this is the ontological argument: Think of the perfect onion, sliced, diced and grilled. If the onion doesn't exist, then it would be less than perfect. Therefore, the perfect onion must exist for it to be truly perfect.

Now replace the onion with god, and that's the ontological argument. (I'm not sure about god, but I worship onions.)

Later on, I get into a conversation with Jenny, Slaid's mother, who's visiting from Maine. I tell her about Slaid's explanation of the ontological argument.

"You know, Slaid was a National Merit Scholar," she says.

"Really?" I reply, smiling too broadly. "Thanks so much for that information."

"Oh, don't mention it to him," she says. "He doesn't like people to know about that side of him."

"Don't worry," I reassure her. "Your secret's safe with me."

Then I interview Slaid's wife, Karen, who keeps talking up my column to anyone who will listen, onion bless her. She's a great interior decorator, by the way. The inside of their house looks like the cover of Country Living magazine. All night long, I keep checking out her crotch for the outline of a penis. Anybody that good at interior design has to be a gay male. At least a she-male.

"I thought about e-mailing you after reading some of your columns, but I was afraid you'd print it," she says.

"No, I never do that. Well, not to people I know or who are on my list. I always ask beforehand."

Of course, people I talk to at parties are fair game, but why should I tell her and ruin the mood?

After a big Texas barbeque of fried turkey and brisket ­- prepared so ably by Uncle Dave ­- we drink some more beer and the guitars come out. I feel sorry for the rest of the neighborhood.

"See what I'm talking about? See what I'm saying? The white folks move in and now they're playing their honky-ass music till all hours of the night."

I manage to get five or six more beers down while the pickers and grinners puncture the air with everything from old time country to New Age folk songs. Time to ridicule Mark again.

"Markie, what's with the pink shirt, boy?"

"It's mustard," he insists.

I don't get it. He's usually quick on the uptake. I keep waiting for him to catch on and say, "What the fuck are you talkin' about, man? You're wearing a pink shirt yourself." Maybe he just couldn't see it under the black trench coat.

After my girlfriend and I come home from the party, I tell her about Mark and the pink shirts.

"That's not like him. He's usually pretty quick with the bullshit," I say.

Karin, already pissed because we stayed at the party three hours longer than planned, fixes me with an icy stare. "You're wearing a purple shirt, moron."

Guess it's time to sober up.

And I'm not a moron, I'm an idiot. Read the fuckin' hat.

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: This column aims to be funny. If you can read anything else into it, you're on your own. Copyright 2000 by Mike Jasper.