The Bartender Knows: SPEED DATING (THE LIGHTENING ROUND)

It’s true. I know. I know.

Everybody’s asking me, “Why Are You Leaving?” I know a lot of people rely on these blogs to answer all of the most perplexing questions in this world. There’s a lot of answers out there. And I know them.

But let us not shed a tear for a bartender, slowly walking off into the sunset. I’ve put the bar rag down, washed my hands, heavily Purell-ing my hands to get the gunk of the New York City bars off my skin.

Imagine the average bacteria on a servers/bartenders hands here in New York City. Hell, imagine just the bacteria on the hands of the average New Yorker. First they leave their apartments, all jacketed up, turning the doorknob closed. Their roommates also have touched their doorknobs, as any of the one night stands they've had traipsing through the house. Then to the Dunkin Donuts or some other ambiguous ‘organic’ coffee shop for those with an anti-capitalist streak. They get a coffee to go handed to them by a pasty, acned faced Puerto Rican. God knows where she’s been all morning. Then onto the subway, touching the seats and slipping ones fingers around the hand rails. How many people ride the New York Public Subway each day?

6.1 million people. Google that shit. That’s 6.1 million doorknobs. 6.1 million coffee cups served. 6.1 million hand-rail fingerprints. Why we are all not bleeding out of our ass from some horrid Bird Flu from Mars?

Thank you, penicillin.

Other than knowing way too much about bacteria and health stats, I also know everything you need to know about life. This is the ‘speed dating’ round, since FEBURARY 4^th, 2015, we are closing this bitch down. No more The Bartender Knows. After the 4th, I don't know anything anymore.

Take heed. Let’s get all this info fast to you like a viral infection (okay, I’ll stop with the metaphor).

YOUR GUIDE TO EVERYTHING IN LIFE (PART 2)

TERRORISM

Assholes. Every last one of them.

My sister, one of them (I’ve got three), is a lawyer. She always went on when we were kids about something called ‘the social contract’. Not sure what legal book she picked this one out of, but a degree from Georgetown ain’t no joke, so whatever pre-teen research must have paid off somewhere.

Her version of the social contract is this. You’re born into the world. You did not choose this. Now that you are here and want to join in the festivities of a democratic society, but we have to agree to a certain code of ethics. No matter what some Cleric in Syria says or even Sigmund fucking Freud, if you are here in this society you must leave other people alone. Unless they break the law. Like rob your mother. Or rape your co-ed friend.

The idea of the social contract is that you let people be as free as they want to be, open as they want to be, and worship who they want. What is not acceptable is killing people. No matter what.

Okay, if you have a gun and find yourself in a foreign country firing live ammunition at other people who live in that country, and you get hurt or killed, well…what the fuck were you doing there in the first place? If someone with a gun and live ammunition came to your country and started firing on the common populace, you wouldn’t like that very much, now would you?

We have got to leave people alone. Until they fuck up. Then we nail them. To the wall.

So Terrorism, go fuck yourself. You may think you’re getting a private room in Allah’s Mansion of a Thousand Virgins. We know all you’re getting is a six foot cold slab down at the morgue.

Good riddance, fuck faces.

HIPSTERS

Never thought the day would come. I’m here actually to defend hipsters.

Now I have written in extreme detail about my hatred for these fucks. But now, everywhere I go, from Williamsburg, Brooklyn (where it all began), to Berlin, Germany, all I hear is hate for whoever these ‘hipsters’ are. And the hate is coming from people other people would call hipsters.

So I’m at the flea market in Mauer Park, Berlin when I overhear a girl with bangs, thick black rimmed glasses in tight jeans and some puffy military coat complain: “Oh, and there’s SO many hipsters around now.”

I pause, confused. I refrain from yelling in this broads face: “You are a fucking hipster, lady!” I don’t. I'm nice.

Or the other person, in Uniqlo and some ratty yoga pants, mat roll over his back, and a man bun. He says: “Williamsburg is ruined. Hipsters killed it all.” This dude rocks a man bun. Seriously, what category would you put him in?

A ‘hipster’ is some one who’s cool, stylish, knows a lot of obscure records, tries to eat non-GMO’d foods, tries to stay skinny, plays in bands, and does all of this well into adulthood.

I ask you, friends, what the hell is wrong with that?

Isn’t that better than ignorant, unread, overweight, boring, gas-guzzling, sweat pant-doning, WalMart shopping, 9 to 5 stooges busy staying uniformed yet opinionated?

Case closed. Hipsters are cool. Leave them alone. They know no better.

SADNESS

Oh, I’m with you on this one, guys. If my soul was a color, it would be a Rothko blue. My color used to be a crimson red, but these days I’ve moved to the other color spectrum and that sort of post-death, mystery blue just gets me every time now. I love, love, love listening to Chet Baker on rainy mornings, sipping coffee and reading Dostoyevsky. People used to make fun of me about being too ‘morose’, or overtly dramatic, or 'too philisophical'. As the years roll by, those that once called me dramatic for no reason admire the fact I spend most of my adult life making art, studying languages, reading obscure novels, creating songs and films, and traveling the world.

So all those people out there who take a lot of shit for being ‘too sensitive’, ‘too emotional, or ‘too philosophical’, know I am here for you.

And it gets better. It does.

Try to walk on the sunny side of the street.

Just be happy your not provocative cartoonists in Paris this week.

It gets better.

It does.