(In case no one wants to read all the way to the end, let me state the important fact that tonight, Friday April 9th, I will be behind the bar of the Brooklyn Rod and Gun, where my friends Free Advice, who are awesome and live at The Paper Swan*, will be playing around 9ish. Two sets’ til maybe midnight? Come, 59 Kent Ave!!)

A few weekends ago I went to a loft party (natch!) off the Morgan stop, right across the street from Roberta’s, where I’d purchased my rosso pizza with pineapple, mushrooms, onions and artichokes to go, after first infusing myself with campfire smoke from their backyard pit. This was not intentional. I do not dig smelling like roasted hotdogs. But I was rocking some delusional optimism about getting a table that night, and it was a nice night. Plus, who doesn’t like to sit around a fire next to fashionable Cathys, thinking abut how they’ll never get this smell out of their elaborately feathered hair combs? Anyhoo, a table was so not happening, and I’d sat in some Porkslap Ale. Also not intentional.

As soon as I hoofed myself and my delicious, delicately crusted pizza pie up to The Paper Swan (if you follow that link, you’ll see a lo-fi zombie movie), however, I knew that my weenie waftings were right in line with the party aesthetics.

Moonshine??!! For reals! Yep, there was a lanky dude hawking bathtub absinthe, gin, bourbon, and even “pinky stinkies”- a hemp infused vodka mixed with something pink and fruity. Possibly guava? There were banjos, mandolins, a Canadian old guy who played way too long, washboards, hollering, hooting, crooning…wait a sec, these were basically all the people who play the fantastic (and free!) “Roots and Ruckus” night at the mildly hard-to-get-to (OMG, I mean it’s off the G, Carrol stop!!), but Fabulous Jalopy Theatre?

This place is so underground, even the teen punks escaping their Park Slope moms n’ pops love it. Crusty leather and bad dye jobs mix and mingle with baby Bob Dylans, shabby-chic June Carters, a pair of dudes who look like they jumped in a time machine at Haight-Ashbury, 1968, a big black guy pretending to be blind, your standard issue in-the-know hipsters, patting themselves on the back for getting there from Bushwick (that’s 2 trains and walking!!!) and some old neighborhood guys who rock it maritime in superfly dock duds.

But not only does this scene moonlight at loft parties; the other night this eccentric British girl who frequents Jalopy (doing interviews of the performers for BBC radio) invited a bunch of us to dinner at her friend’s dad’s Upper East Side apartment, with windows everywhere. You could spit on the Met! We watched a car burn in Central Park from the balcony! We ate delicious homemade Indian food, and THEN THE MOONSHINE GUY SHOWED UP, and we drank really strong gin while Eli and Craig from The Dustbusters, and Ernie of Ernie Vega plucked at strings.

And this wasn’t unusual for these cats! When Eli walked in, he looked around, seemingly impressed, and said, “Wow, this is the nicest apartment I’ve been to in months.” Months??? How about the nicest apartment I’ve ever been to ever in my whole life???! And Feral Foster, Arch Bishop of the Roots n’ Ruckus collective, was casually talking about how his friend so-and-so’s place was almost this nice. Soandso lived in Barbara Streisand’s old apt., btw, and Barbie don’t mess around! I guess it’s just an East Coast, old-new money thing my middle-class Cali mind can’t yet get over.

Whatevs. Almost as underground as Jalopy is the basement-turned-mountain-cabin-swingers-lodge of Northeast Kingdom (also, great food!), off the très chic (aka, mildly sketchy with dots of hiprification just sprouting) Jefferson L stop. And then there’s the Brooklyn Rod and Gun, which asks Williamsburgers to put their money where their owl bling and vintage cowboy boots are. Yes, this is totes a real fly-fishing, skeet shooting club, and in the summer they’ll give you some fishing lessons across the street in the East River! Throw ‘em back!

But the best reasons to come to this club are to see all the Jalopy acts you haven’t yet mustered up the cojones to see play; to throw a few on the grill blazing outside (or just eat the free bbq stuffs offered, but BYO if you’re a veggie), and to satisfy your appetite for endless peanuts in the shell and a feeling of elusive exclusivity. This bar is only open to members and guests, which makes it super cool. Of course, all you have to do to become an imbibing guest is buy a six-punch drink card for $20, which you can share with friends or horde and bring back every Friday or Sunday. But if you want to really be in with the in-crowd, you pay a lifetime member fee of $25, and then you can buy ten-punch drink cards for only $30. Imagine…$3 drinks all night long…forever!

Banjo Jim’s in the Lower East Side, and The Loving Cup Cafe (which has an insane happy hour, off Bedford on N.6th), are also great place to check the new-old folk scene, but these are much to easy to access to be very cool. Hold out a hot minute ‘til convenience is chic again, and then go right away, cuz that biz don’t last!

Case of the BK folk underground…still open and kicking.

See you tonight!!!

• Tight Pantsy Drew Snoop Scoop: SUPERBOWL SUNDAY RECAP!
• nyc zine fest ’09
• the twitter experiment!

So, I like, fo reals had a ridic rad assignment all lined up for Super Snoop Sunday, which was to infiltrate the neo-golf subculture couched within some Aussie dude’s Superbowl party in the West Village and report back to my peeps at AMR. My homegirl Ellie’s ex/not-ex boyf who she like just kicked out of her pad is now crashing with the Aussie-partydude, so it seemed all drama and whatevs, but eff it. There’s gonna be golfers there??? Weird. The only golfers I know are like my dad and my gramps, so I was all set to find out what was the color a la mode for polo shirts. Collars popped up? Have golf shoes become hip like bowling shoes, informing street shoes, informing golf shoes, informing Fashion Week? Is it still all about plaid and argyle, or are they mixin it up with metallic leggings or neon harem pants? Has Tiger Woods made golfing sexy? Are these golfers gonna be total scrotties? Back when I was a teenager, my grandpa was all about trying to get me to pimp myself out to pro golfers. We’d be watching a game on the tube, and he’d point out some sideline slutz all decked out in Ralph Lauren visors and shorts and biz, and he’d say, “You know, you should really just go hang out at these tournaments like those gals… pick up a nice young pro. There’s big money in golf!” So like, I know the whole Tiger Woods shiz is totes played out (SCOOPED!!!), but I’m just gonna throw in my op to the ed, and say that it probably wasn’t Tiger’s libido that got all caaarrraaaaaazzzzy OOC. He was just trying to make all those ladies’ grandpas happy!

Ya, but so anyway, these clearly weren’t pro golfers we were dealing with because #1, they said we could only come if we were ladies, and #2, we had to bring some sort of 7-layer dip nonsense. Pro golfers would not care if we were ladies or not, because they’d be knee deep in beeatches anyway, and pro golfers would’ve had that shiz mad catered with like, sashimi florets riding on ten-foot tall swans carved out of ice. 7-layer dip???!!!! Eff that noise, Ellie and I only had enuf scratch for about one layer each, so we didn’t go. Instead we just stayed at her place and shared a Brooklyn Brewery Monster Ale (10% alc by volume!), and drank all her roommate’s BB Winter Ale, which was not nearly as delightful as the Monster Ale, which, according to the bottle, was brewed in the style of barley wine and best enjoyed from a goblet. We improvised and enjoyed it out of chilled Crate and Barrel stemless wine glasses. The stolen beer was enjoyed straight from the bottle, as stolen beer should be. Class! We’d decided to root for The Saints, so occasionally we’d look up and boo about them being behind, and then in like ten seconds they were ahead. Yay!

So then Elli decided to break out the credit card to order us sushi and Japanese pickles, and I boiled frozen stringbeans and edamame to mix with soy sauce, rice vinegar, and chili paste, and it was effing awesome, so then we decided we needed vodka mixed with Rose’s lime juice and Sprite Zero (so we wouldn’t get fat), but that made The Who’s performance even grosser, but NEwayz it didn’t matter much because I was too busy trying to find out if their drummer was this dude I’d gotten bizzy with like forevs ago. But that dude’s name was Morgan and even though he was a drummer, he was not Ringo Starr’s son, so whatevs. That rocker hairdo makes all rockers look the same. If I were one of America’s Most Wanted, I’d totes go get a rocker hairdo and hide out as a roadie for The Who. Hopefully they’d take me to Europe and then I’d sneak off to Switzerland and just board and yodel for the rest of my life. WTF, now The Saints have 23 points? When did that happen???!!! Suddenly everyone’s stoked and pouring ice everywhere, and WTF!!! What’s wrong with that baby???!!!

Then there were puppies running around everywhere because it was PUPPY BOWL, and finally we landed on the Korean channel and got sucked into a confusing Korean Soap opera that seemed a little like Romeo and Juliet, only nobody died. I think the young couple just didn’t want to live with their annoying, track-suit wearing family (Korean Mafia?), and the parents were so upset they got drunk, tried to fight each other, and scrubbed the floor really well. The show kind of ended with the girl getting tricked by a fake contest with a fake laptop as a prize, and then suddenly she understood things and called her boyfriend’s dad and everyone was crying and then the credits exploded, and it looked like we’d been watching a hilarious sitcom, not a soap opera. Maybe it needed a laugh track??

Okay, so the case is totes closed on Superbowl Sunday (raddest ever!), but totes open on the neo-golf subculture and Korean television programming.

Lates!

TPD

Tight Pantsy Drew Zines:
Tight Pantsy Mystery no. 1 – L Hath No Fury
Tight Pantsy Drew Mystery Zine no. 2 – D.I.Y. or DIE
Tight Pantsy Mystery no. 3 – Flickr’d Out

• nyc zine fest ’09
• Tight Pantsy Drew Snoop Scoop: The Folk Underground
• RACHEL RABBIT’S BOURGIE NIGHTMARE: FAKE GLASSES

• Tight Pantsy Drew Snoop Scoop: SUPERBOWL SUNDAY RECAP!
• Tight Pantsy Drew Snoop Scoop: The Folk Underground
• RACHEL RABBIT’S BOURGIE NIGHTMARE: FAKE GLASSES

what follows is the slightly tippled idea i had to use twitter in the manner of the youths/american media personalities (the so-called “twitterati”), broadcasting every (mostly) substantive change over the course of a friday night to over 400 people via cellular/social-networking technology.

AMR editorial notes follow orginal twitters (tweets?) throughout.

nick courage
At vodka tasting
about 16 hours ago from txt

l.a. henkel, author of Tight Pantsy Drew and Dear Drunk Girl, is notoriously flibbertigibbet (i’m sorry, but it’s true). we were supposed to have mexican, and then a friend was sitting on our steps in icy williamsburg so rachel couldn’t meet us, and then there were l.a.’s similarly flibbertigibbet work friends and a free vodka/gin tasting. which was hilarious. highlights were heavy water, glacier tapped and glowing from sweden, and bulldog, which had a presentation table that looked as if a bad maxim spread exploded all over it. i tried not to get too drunk on thimble sized dixiecups of elderflower martinis and black & golds.

nick courage
Lost l.a. En route to rabbit hole
about 15 hours ago from txt

l.a. has a big purse, so had some issues finding her metrocard. her friends were confused rabbits and got on the train without her, i stayed and recommended going to the bedford stop (because that’s where we’d talked about meeting her friends, and because i had to pick up rachel and other friend). we got out of the subway, her friends had gone a few more stops because “they were confused”. to be fair, it is a wild and woolly world. i met up with r. and her friend at – appropriately – the rabbit hole, to reconoitter with l.a. later.

nick courage
Just bought bulldog gin influenced by tasting
about 15 hours ago from txt

rachel and friend got me a mission style burrito (at the place where someone stuck a boner dollar sticker under the register) and i went to the wine store, originally for a bottle or two of syrah. turns out i’m totally susceptible to trashy marketing sometimes. or maybe it was just the Bulldog representative’s terrible sales pitch: “i just put it in a pitcher for the girls and mix it with Crystal Lite!”

nick courage
I am live blogging via twitter for as long as i remember tonight
about 14 hours ago from txt

finally i come around to my statement of intent. Q: is it still liveblogging if you’re just updating facebook status through twitter text messages?

nick courage
I love this gin!
about 13 hours ago from txt

the gin ended up being a good choice regardless.

nick courage
Found l.a. She says hi!
about 13 hours ago from txt

met back up with l.a. the show was literally half a block from my house, so she came by and helped with the bulldog. her friends were supposed to come, but i guess they were needed back at the warren?

nick courage
Now everyone is drunk and teasing me about amr we are listening to the eternal cowboy
about 12 hours ago from txt

you know that cathartic moment when everyone just turns on one person and teases the shit out of them, and then afterwards it’s like the Carrie movie credits and it’s sort of tense and eerie but everyone knows that the worst that can possibly happen is over? well, it wasn’t like that at all – these girls… their hearts weren’t in it… but apparently i shouldn’t ever talk about Search Engine Optimization in public ever, ever again.

As for The Eternal Cowboy, it’s a pretty great album. i never cared that they moved from No Idea to Fat Wreck. Now that Tom’s doing solo stuff again, I’m even warming to New Wave.

nick courage
Wish i had roomba 4 tha cats; kinks only have one good album
about 12 hours ago from txt

I don’t remember the roomba thing – but the kinks do only have one good album, and if you’re buying that shizz on vinyl it’s all pretty expensive, so don’t waste your money! this is the one to get: Lola versus Powerman and the Money-Go-Round, Part One

nick courage
This chick is telling me shes my great aunt eff that!
about 12 hours ago from txt

this happens more than you would think. whether she meant she was a better-than-good regular aunt or a truly old auntie: the world may never know.

nick courage
Going to dead herring! Animal theme night ! Cannonglllljrigs klit t
about 11 hours ago from txt

Dead Herring is a friend-of-a-friend run loft venue around the block from my house, and Friday was turning into an animal themed night (Rabbits, Herring, Bulldog). The “Cannon…” part is L.A. wanting to help update my live blog with gibberish, but not realizing my cellphone does the predictive text thing. So she couldn’t get the right gibberish to post. I think the work holds regardless.

nick courage
I am the only one sans glasses its okay
about 11 hours ago from txt

If you live in brooklyn, you know what it means to be the only person at an underground show not wearing glasses (realizing, perhaps, that a full third of the people there probably have plastic lenses in their buddy hollys). This isn’t a great sign, but it’s not terrible either. It’s more like a little post-it from the universe saying “steel yourself”; i always appreciate the warning.

nick courage
Everyone s mom here is at home listening to free jazz and experimenting with vegetables … Probably
about 11 hours ago from txt

I make the delayed, but not unexpected, call that this show is very unlike a regular DIY show – you know, where you look around and maybe get a little sad and wonder where some people’s mothers are. Here, we have a good idea where the mothers are, and roughly what they’re doing. Without wanting to assume too much, the collective moms may also be streaming archives of This American Life on NPR. Also: I meant, like… vegetable fusion stir fry.

nick courage
Ugh
about 10 hours ago from txt

The band was pretty fun, they sounded vaguely superchunk-ish (that is, like mid-90s north carolina indie-rock) – but they had terrible feedback and didn’t know to either turn off the monitors – were there monitors? – or face away from their amps, or change something… anything. They chugged through their set regardless, not unlike the JMZ train, which you could see intermittently behind them.

nick courage
Theyre playing sleepover i feel like a young dad how did this happen; eating honey combs
about 10 hours ago from txt

We left the show and came back to our house. It was fun – sort of like sitting in an aviary, but with more ZOMGs. There are no more Honeycombs this morning.

nick courage
This girl years tiny converse like a seeing eye tiny horse would wear!
about 10 hours ago from txt

i know you all must know that some blind people “allergic to dogs” (sure) are using miniature guide-horses. they get tiny tennis shoes, like reebok pumps. This girl’s shoes looked like guide horse shoes:

nick courage
Well that was fun carried a couch and grew a beard good night
about 3 hours ago from txt

So that’s how Twitter works. I don’t know that I’ll ever feel the need to do it again, but it was fun while it lasted.

this is what the band we saw meant to sound like:

• Tight Pantsy Drew Snoop Scoop: The Folk Underground
• Tight Pantsy Drew Snoop Scoop: SUPERBOWL SUNDAY RECAP!
• AMR Podcast #22: Poetry of Departures/Two Feminists

summation, in an only slightly hyperbolic eleven: reading other words, including these, is a waste of everybody’s time.

in the meantime, you can slum through just a few more and:

friend her on Facebook (name: Tight Pantsy Drew Hardy), follow her alter-ego’s advice column online – even write in – at Dear Drunk Girl, and for christ’s sake try to do yourself a favor zine-wise. you can try e-mailing tightpantsydrew@gmail.com or, if you’re more patient than me, you can bide your time until we have a few copies here that we plan on making available for mail order only.

*so she’s going with the lowest common denominator and letting us distribute.

• Tight Pantsy Drew Snoop Scoop: The Folk Underground
• Tight Pantsy Drew Snoop Scoop: SUPERBOWL SUNDAY RECAP!
• nyc zine fest ’09