Twistinado

Come here when you wanna know what to think about your life and the world you live in. I know everything and nothing, at the same time.

Monday, July 14, 2008

RIP Winos

I'm sitting on my parents porch, right now revisiting Sa-Ra's Hollywood Recordings. When I listen to music for more than backdrop, I usually have some "taste" with me. "Taste" is what older black men call alchohol. I happen to be drinking Wild Irish Rose out of a plastic cup. It's the product of what was a bit of an evening journey.

Earlier in the afternoon, my father, while doing the lawn, approached the porch to hit me with what was, to him, a bittersweet anecdote.

"Yo, Vince. Check this: Man, the other day, I just had a jones for some 'white'" (Wild Irish Rose -- known as the drink of choice for jitterbug lushes low on funds-- comes in red and white. But in the hood, it's simply refered to by its color. You don't ask for Rose, you simply ask for a "white" or a "red". In fact you don't ask for a pint of white, you as for a "long neck white" they're called "long necks" because the bottles are long, slim cylinders that resemble Will Ferrell's character in the Oblong cartoon)

He continued: "So I went to my spot to kop and they said they had one more long neck left."

Then he dropped this revelation on me that made me practically spit out my coffee onto my Esquire.

"And the dude behind the counter said that's the last one he'll ever sell."

Huh? WhatchutalkinboutPops?

"Man, Vince, them suckaz at Richards (the manufacturer/ghetto vineyard) are discontinuing all the long necks, baby!! Can you believe that, man?!

I couldn't. So Pops and I decided that over the next few days, we're gonna travel to all the local liq-stores and buy out the last of the long-necks, so, as Pops said with a straight-face, somber-tone and heavy-heart, "So we can give them a proper home and proper goodbye."

Pops is not a wino or lush, but when he was a teen, he cut his drinking teeth on Rose. Before he found Jah, his claims to fame where being able to shoot 30-foot jumpers, "out-cuss a nigga" and, as he's said often, "drink a lame under the table." He first started with red then moved to white. Although he suscribes to ridiculous urban-myths like "drinkin that red puts freckles on a nigga's nose", he said that his crew chose Rose because it was "better" than the other lush liquid back then, namely Rose' chief competitor, Thunderbird. So if/when he cracks a long neck white (always in the paper bag) and takes that first sip, he's trippin down memory lane. He might as well be listening to Bitches Brew.

Anyways, all the Buff liq stores are selling out. I went to a spot in a poor white neighborhood called Black Rock. Nothing. Then I went to a new spot that opened on Main Street. The girl looked at me and said, "they aint makin them no mo. We been out since Fursday."

So I went to an old trusty, Pernell's on Fillmore. (I know the actual names of liquor stores in the cities I've lived in.) He was out whites too, but he had three long neck reds left. So I kopped to fifths of the white and the three long neck reds.

Mr. Pernell was sittin in the back with his arms folded over his liquir-n-ribs gut and said, "you got the last of 'em, youngster."

Then the jitterbug workin the counter, a mid-40s aged kat, rockin a wife-beater, talking on a cell phone with fake-diamond bedazzlers, dropped the bottles on the counter and in the most eery James Brown voice said "Uh! 11.50!" Not "eleven fifty", but "elemem fiddym" Then he winked. He knew it was a moment.

Rose has always been a stalwart of hood liq-stores, specifically the long necks. If a wino has about 2 bucks, he's going to the medicine shop and koppin a long neck white or red.

When I got back to the crib I asked Pops why on earth they would discontinue a wino staple. He swigged his red and then hit me with one of the most heavy generation-gap observations in a while.

"I don't know, baby. I mean, I'm sure they did their consumer studies and what not, but probably the gist of of it is that you young boys just don't really drink wine no mo. I mean, when yall wanna go get some taste, yall aint koppin no wine."

I was like, "Yeah, I dig. I guess it aint no winos anymore, huh, Pops?"

I mean, my dude Rek said when he would pick up an occassional long neck, the counterman would usually ask, "dis for your grandfather?"

Think about that. There are plenty of Gen X drunks and lushes, but no winos. What 20-40 year old says, "Man, I got a couple singles on me...hmmm...let me go kop some wine"? Probably like, .056%.

Don't get me wrong, like I said, there are plenty of Gen X drunks, just not winos. I mean, even take my crew (not my CHS crew, my other crew) for instance. Our tastes run the gamut. We like to $120 bottles of single malt scotch, but we also kop malt liquor -- our generation's Rose. When Rite Aid was selling Hurricane's for 99 cent last summer, me and Rek would just look at each other and say things like, "It's Katrina Time" or "Let's get Huey'd". But wine? Na.

We call one of our boys "Vino", but not because he drinks cheap wine, just because he "looks" like a wino.

When we were young and broke, we didn't buy wine, we bought cheap brandy and nicknamed them after jazz musicians and athletes based on their initials. E&J became Elvin Jones, Christian Brothers became Charles Barkley.

Me? I can spend close to $200 at specialty beer stores and do so in every city I live in. But I also made habit of buying Puerto Rican rum when I lived in tampa. That used to be a typical satirday or sunday for me. I'd try to recreate some dish I saw on Food Network or throw some meat on the grill and drink rum with names like Ron Rico or Juan Carlos. The thing is, they cost like $8 for a full fifth, $10 for a whole liter. If that's your official poison, itd probably put freckles on your nose like the red.

Still, Ron Rico was cheap go-to, not wine.

I have no idea when this shift occurred. But, by the 90s, Wu-Tang was pitching St. Ides, everyone in John Singleton flicks was drinkin OE, Spike Lee was parodying malt-liquor with his atomic-bomb bottles and young men were choosing cheap brandies over wine. (Maybe my fav song of 2008 is Dwele's metaphoric ode to cheap brandy)

It's sad that Rose is getting discontinued (long necks at least). I personally attach a very romantic tag to the wino-archetype. What isn't quaint about some old dude with a lil dough, drinking drinking cheap, ghetto vine? A jitterbug-sophisticado is Americana to me. My generation swigging on big 40 bottles or mixing juan carlos with RC Cola is just no where near as deviantly distinguished as a snaggle-tooth old timer sippin a long neck white.

RIP Rose and RIP winos.

For what its worth my father has vacilated between extreme ways of euologizing the death of long necks. He toggles between directives like, "Vince put those in the back of the fridge, some peoples' eyes aint even worthy of looking at the majesty of a long neck" to the other end "Man, Vince, I think I'm gonna start drinkin Rose at dinner parties."

That's nosalgia speaking, but let's be clear: somwhere in Cleveland or Detroit or DC or Dallas or Compton, there are winos mourning. They just lost the medicine for their cough.

Black Men Don't Whisper

I love watching Jesse's Obama-Nuts gaffe on YouTube, but I always end up kinda feeling bad for him. I'm sure he actually wants to rip Obama's nuts from his crotch, he said so and caught on a hot mic, but he didn't wanna get caught, I don't think. Poor geezer.

Don't get it twisted, I think it was preposterously dumb what he did. I mean, I have a proclivity for being offensive...it's actually quite miraculous that, to be so tragically obese, I'm flexible enough to perpetually stick my foot in my mouth; but when I'm on television and hooked with a mic, I keep my El Salvadorian jokes to myself. It actually boggles the mind that Jesse would ever say something so inflammatory with a camera pointed at him and a mic near his mouth. But he did. Apparently his frustration (and likely jealousy) is/was so strong, that he couldn't hold it in. He was like the biblical Jeremiah in that way, I guess. His urge to let some one know that he wanted to paw Obama's nads from tween his legs was so strong that he had to get it out there and then. Problem is, he's a man -- a black man at that...so whispering wasn't an option. If J could've leaned over and softly whispered that vitriol, he would have. Except, well, that would've been, hmmm, how do I say this, uhhh, well, that would have been really gay.

Men don't whisper, unless they're trying to seduce a woman. Whispering is typically viewed one of two ways: effeminate or sexual. If Jesse would have leaned over and whispered to that black man (whose name escapes me), that black man may have have elbowed him in the chin. I'm sure there's going to be some schmuck reading this saying, "hey, wait a second there, fella. I whisper to my pals all the time." To you, I offer a pat on the back, a doggy biscuit and some sage advice: stop whispering in other men's ears, sir. I ask my fellow mates: how often have you felt some man's hot negro/anglo breath seeping into your ear or down the side of your neck? Probably never, right?

Jesse hit us with the gangsta move. Did you see him? His lips were severely pursed, his neck was taut and he spoke his castration plans through gritted teeth. In a way, it was similar to what big, old black woman do at baptist churches. "Look at that skirt that this heffa got on." Big ol black women at baptist churches do this not because they're adversed to whispering, but because the physical act of whispering is too much of a spectacle. Jesse did it because a man should never have his mouth anywhere near another man's ear lobe.

Trust me, if Amy Holmes would have been seated next to the Rev, he'd have leaned in for a whisper in a second. "Amy, I hate Barack just like you do. Talkin down to the black folks. I wanna remove his primate genitalia. Anyways, whatchu doin after this, sweet thang? Why don't you come back to my hotel for Operation Push." Why? Because Amy is a sexy lil somethin and the Rev would have been OK with getting close enogh to smell her perfume. But he didn't wanna smell that black man's (name still escaping) stetson cologne.

It's too bad. Now he's getting pounced on. Women deal with menstrual cycles and child births. Men can't whisper to other men. I'm struggling to determine who's got it worse.