The Collegian Court

There's really nothing I like better than to wander into a restaurant with good food and a perfect atmosphere.

This feels so "Stuff White People Like" to say, but yeah, there is something really great about authenticity, or at least the ILLUSION of authenticity. About going somewhere that feels untouched by time-- not like you're stepping back in time, but as if you are stepping OUT of time. And time passes differently. You are so entranced with the music, the lights, the wallpaper, and the speed that your decrepit old waitress moves, that you can't tell if it's been an hour or ten minutes since you ordered.

Well, I went someplace like that yesterday. It's a Polish restaurant in Chicopee, MA called the Collegian Court. My friends who'd been there before said it was necessary to go, so 7 people piled into a Buick, drove to Chicopee and tried to find this restaurant. It was a grey, wet day and the brick buildings and empty streets of Chicopee seemed so sad. There were a few men zooming down the street on scooter wheelchairs, a couple of kids walking alone, and a group of younger men in suits standing awkwardly outside of a church. It took us a really long time of driving in circles to find the restaurant, but when we did, it was so worth it.

We walked inside into a dark bar/lounge area. I think there was an elderly couple sitting there. Past that was the empty dining room, where two old waitresses squabbled over where we could sit. The first thing I heard anyone say was "that table is reserved for the funeral!" The other waitress led us to a circular table and said "she's confused. Isn't this perfect? Seven chairs, seven people. Isn't this a good table?"

My friend Jennifer, always ready to converse with seemingly odd people replied, "yes! I really like how it's a circle." That seemed to satisfy the waitress and she went away.

The funeral party arrived and sat at the far end of the dining room from us.

As if the situation wasn't Lynchian enough, Bobby Vinton was playing over the speakers. "Mr. Lonely" and "Blue Velvet." The old waitress came back to give us coffee. It was painful to watch her move around the table so slowly. "I'm not a waitress," she told us.

Our waitress, it turned out, was an extremely frazzled young woman who kept forgetting what we'd ordered and almost overcharged us to an absurd extent.

The food was excellent, but like I said, I have no idea how long we waited for it. Bobby Vinton was replaced by traditional Polish music. They never refilled our coffee or gave us more water. It didn't really matter. It was a cool place. Even the funeral party seemed to be having a pretty good time. Only thing is that I kept hearing the voice of a child, but couldn't spot one in the restaurant, which didn't make much sense because the only people there were my party and the funeral party.

I got a loaf of pumpkin bread to go. We got back into the car and left. As we drove away from the Collegian Court, I wondered if I'd ever be able to go back. If I'd be able to make it back to Chicopee and find my way to that street corner. I wondered if it would still be there and I left the sad town of Chicopee for Northampton and realized why I hate it here.

Northampton must have looked just like Chicopee once, another New England town full of laid-off factory workers, before those fucks pumped so much money into it and created this monstrous pseudo-utopian post-hippie, socially liberal, Asian fusion loving, organic food buying, hemp wearing bubble of bourgeois denial. How many laid-off factory workers do you think found jobs at the vegan restaurant, the fair-trade cafe, at the Buddha statue peddling Orientalisms 'R Us, at the vintage clothing stores or cheap "ethnic" chachki gift shops?

Northampton is just as sad as Chicopee, but even moreso, because here they pretend there's nothing wrong. And restaurants like the Collegian Court can't exist here, because they're so old and depressing. Because the waitstaff can barely move. Because the service is awful.

And where are the old people here? Not the ones protesting the war, but the REAL old people. The sad old people. The ones who go to early bird specials and stare at eachother. I miss them.

So I guess that's all there is to say. I hope to find more pockets of pure weird beauty in Western Mass. Chicopee gave me hope. Northampton still disgusts me. Maybe it will change my mind.

When holidays fuck you in the face

Maybe it's just a part of growing up, but I don't enjoy holidays as much as I used to.

When did birthdays start to suck?

When did Christmas become so unbelievably depressing?

When did Halloween turn into "let's do what we do every weekend except we're in costume and we'll get even MORE fucked up"?

Maybe all of those childhood memories build up impossible expectations. Maybe I think that if I do the holiday just right, I'll be able to go back somehow to that idealized time that never was. That feeling of autumn excitement when it's actually becoming fall and you need to start wearing a jacket, that strange, wonderful feeling of being publicly in costume, the anxiety on the way to school that maybe you messed up somehow and it's not really Halloween, and then the relief when you see the other kids in their monster masks and angel wings. Trick or treating or handing out candy while watching scary movies. Even in high school I had a lot of fun on Halloween. Sure there'd be substance abuse, but there would also be movies. The spirit was still there.

This Halloween was a disaster. My plans for a horrorfest went to shit because I couldn't connect the projector to my computer and no PCs would recognize my external harddrive. There were no movies, only drunk girls in costumes dancing on my beloved, now deceased, glasses.

November 1st and July 8th were always my least favorite days of the year. The day after Halloween and the day after my birthday. Now they've become a day when I can breathe. Phew, a whole year until I have to deal with that ordeal again.

Next up is Thanksgiving. Good thing I never liked that holiday.

Still, I have hope. I have a whole year until the next Halloween. Maybe I'll get it right this time...

sweet sweet tobacco

I love cigarettes.

Why? Because they're fucking great.

For some reason, however, the world doesn't want me to smoke. I turn on the TV and get told not to smoke. I go to the store to buy cigarettes in this ridiculous state called Massachusetts, and the 6.50 they're charging for a damned pack of Marlboro reds tells me not to smoke.

If I had my way, I'd smoke Gauloises all of the time. They're strong, they're delicious, and I like reading the health warnings in French and German. They don't sell them here anymore. It's cruel.

I also really like Lucky Strike filtered cigarettes. They were the first cigarette I ever really got into. I was 15. My film geek friends and I took the LA public transit down to Little Tokyo, to a store called Family Mart, and the bravest of us went in and bought a pack of Luckies. I'd smoked before, but most of them hadn't. I distinctly remember my friend D, probably the most pretentious of the bunch, coughing and hacking while asking "Do I look cool?"

He didn't. I don't think smoking necessarily makes you look cool. If you already look cool, and you're smoking, then yes, you will still probably look cool...unless you're coughing and asking whether or not you look cool.

I guess I first tried smoking because I thought it would be "cool" of me to try. I was 14 and ditching gym class. I was still in my phys. ed uniform in a nearby residential garage, crouching behind a car smoking Virginia Slims someone had stolen from her mother.

I kept smoking because I liked it. I keep smoking because I like it.

It's really unhealthy though, which I try to justify with the fact that so many things I do are unhealthy. My shrink would rather I gave up pot than cigarettes, just because Nicotine doesn't cause brain damage. She has a one track mind.

I hate the anti-smoking propaganda. It's so damned preachy. Those truth. ads, for instance, fill me with rage. They're just so smug.

What gets me the most are the absurd cigarette taxes in some states. What Americans smoke? The young and the working-class. How many middle-aged bourgeois smoke? Not too many. How many middle-aged rich people smoke? Not too many. I think it's a classist tax masquerading as a protective measure. It wasn't always this way, but now it really is. In Germany there are high taxes on cigarettes as well, but there's also a much higher income tax on the rich. And everyone gets health insurance. Where is our cigarette tax money going? I don't know, but certainly not towards treating the lung cancer or emphesyma we're going to have later. It's not even helping little poor kids with leukemia.

A bunch of it probably goes to anti-smoking education. Which is paired up in our schools with the War on Drugs. Anti-drug education in schools is a disaster. These are the drugs they taught me about:

-cigarettes
-alcohol
-marijuana
-pcp

Does anyone see a problem with this, other than me? First of all, they did it in some kind of least harmful to most harmful order that doesn't really make sense. They also seemed to skip cocaine, heroin, mushrooms, speed and lsd. (but maybe I'm just not remembering things right)

I went to public school in one of the most affluent sub-cities of Los Angeles. To make us not want to smoke, they just made it sound like it was something poor people did. "Smoking is dirty and stinky. You'd have to be stupid and uneducated to smoke, because it's so bad for you and makes your lungs and mouth dirty."

For alcohol, it was beer makes you fat, it all hurts your liver, and that drunk driving kills. But the bottom line was just that we weren't old enough. Alcohol leads to so many more horrible things to young people than cigarettes. When was the last time you heard:

"oh man, do I ever regret that. I had unprotected sex last night with a stranger. I need to get the morning after pill and then get tested for STDs. Yeah, I know it was stupid, but I'd had like, half a pack of cigs, I didn't know what I was doing anymore."

Or what about this sad story on the news:

"Today tragedy struck the parents of little Sally Mason, a carefree seven year old girl. Her life was cut short by a car of teenagers under the influence of nicotine."

Never. This is problem number one with anti-smoking education. It's paired up with anti-teen drinking education, when they are two completely different issues. Smoking may be bad for you, but chances are, it's not going to change your life in one night. And when teens get drunk for the first time and don't do something they regret the next day, they might start to wonder how many other things had been a bit exaggerated in their education.

Which brings me to drug number three: marijuana. Oh sweet sweet marijuana. Those poor bastards don't know what to do about you. They can't lie outright anymore like they used to because our parents smoked pot and it's ubiquitous in our popular culture, even moreso than cigarettes. And when they teach us, we're so young, and they want us to keep our faith in the laws of our country. Well, here's the million dollar question: Why shouldn't I smoke pot?

Well first of all, it's illegal. This point is true. Even in California, where it's decriminalized to the point of being on par with jay-walking (no pun intended), things are different if you're a minor. Your school will put you through some dreadful mandatory rehabilitation program, or they'll expel you.

But why is it illegal?

This is where it gets tricky. It's a drug, but so are cigarettes and alcohol, which are legal. It supports terrorism, but so does putting gas in our cars. It...is...bad? It makes you stupid! Yes, that's the answer. Marijuana makes you stupid. It kills your braincells, you drop out of school, you become a vegetable...a HIPPIE vegetable. AND it leads to harder drugs. Why, did I ever tell you about the time that little Jennie smoked marijuana...LACED WITH PCP!!!!??!?!

And then they continue to tell horrible stories about PCP. Marijuana is not PCP. And when kids smoke pot for the first time, it probably won't have PCP in it. In fact, I've been smoking pot for six years, and I've never encountered PCP.

So if alcohol and pot aren't as bad as everyone said they were, maybe cigarettes are worth a try as well.

All I'm saying here, is that if I'm going to pay 6.50 for a pack of smokes, I want that extra money to go to something worthwhile. And that kids need to be better educated about illicit substances.