Category: ultrapersonal

The Rumpus Room Manifesto

Originally written in February 1994.

I tend to feel disenfranchised, outcast, eccentric. I’ve got feminist sensibilities that make me feel guilty because I’m a man. I feel like my manhood is skewed because I’m not a straight man, so I can’t buy into the whole straight, white male cultural elite mindset. I feel alienated from the gay community because I can’t fathom or play the social/power games I see all over it, I bristle at a lot of its affectations, and can’t understand its rituals and customs. I feel separated from my friends for being too weird or not weird enough. I have no lover, so I don’t feel like I belong to a cozy twosome. At work I feel too young or too powerless and impatient.

My vision of the Rumpus Room . . . is to define my place, my sensibilities, my ideas. Ideally, others will respond, but this project is too personal for me to make concessions for the sake of popularity. I want to use Rumpus Room to explore my philosophy, my humor, my politics, my aesthetic, my abilities.

My vision for the magazine (my marketing vision, my conceptual vision) is to give other people a chance to respond to what’s in Rumpus Room, not allow it to become so half-assed that it becomes accessible to the lowest common denominator.

The rumpus room is a place to gossip, to gab, to argue, to tell jokes, to watch TV, and to play cards and stuff. It’s the rec room, the family room, the living room.

Imagine you’re hearing a low wolf whistle

If you’ve come this far, you should know right off the bat that I’m not holding out for some unearthly hunk that’s so far out of my league that I may as well be playing another sport altogether. Attraction is a delicate balancing act of looks, personality, wit, style, and all that other junk. It’s too hard (and it would be too misleading) for a simple guy like me to try and come up with a bulleted list of stuff that makes me all hot and bothered and sappy and mushy. Of course, I also know what will make me lose track of what I’m thinking if I see it walking down the street. So to give you some idea of what sets my hormones a-raging (as far as purely external qualities go), here are a few quick things to look at.

This “Perfect Love” Business Is Horseshit!

I’m pretty convinced of it. I desperately want to believe that such a thing exists, but I’m immediately suspicious whenever people claim to have found it. I think they’re deluding themselves.

Don’t get me wrong. I think love is out there — I’ve gotten to play the game myself a couple of times. I just don’t think love is perfect. It’s not all goodness and light, chickadees and rainbows. Love at first sight — the happy, Davey Jones eye-twinkle, babytalk love — is a crock. It’s lust that somehow manages to make the successful transition to an actual relationship without too much agony along the way. I think love is made up of lots of compromise, patience, friction, and the reluctance to just bag it when the going gets rough.

Even to me, my words sound a little harsh. Although a lot of the last paragraph is paraphrased from the writings of love guru Leo Buscaglia, it nevertheless has the stink of the charred hair of someone who’s been burned. I must be frank — I have been.

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Where All Men Are United in the Love of Chicken-N-Waffle

Eddie outside Roscoe'sRoscoe’s the name
and they call me the king,
grandmaster of the chicken
and the waffle thing.
I said read my lips and, friends,
don’t miss a word
‘Cause the grandmaster’s gonna
give you the bird!

Eddie and MattWhen I first saw Tapeheads, I nearly hemorrhaged from laughing during the commercial spot that the two main characters did for Roscoe’s House of Chicken-N-Waffles. I thought the idea was so crazy, so inane. It was a stroke of brilliance on the part of the screenwriter.

Boy howdy, was I amazed when I found out that Roscoe’s really exists. Actually,
there are three of them scattered throughout the greater L.A. area. When
I found out that I was going to be in L.A., I knew that if nothing else, I had to make a holy pilgrimage to this soaring tribute to entrepreneurial spirit.

Roscoe’s is mostly a soul food restaurant, with big hearty meals at good
prices. Despite a tantalizing assortment, I knew I had to have the #20 —
the “Carolina” chicken plate with a buttermilk waffle on the side. This was some good eatin’s — the creamiest butter, the thickest syrup, the tenderest chicken breast. If you have chicken and waffle, trust me: you really have to eat both at the same time. The combo sounds scary, but it’s truly delightful — hot, sweet, and rich.

This place is no secret, either. We showed up right before the rush, apparently.
When we left, totally satiated and deliriously happy, there was a huge line
down the street. Obviously, California cuisine can also mean biscuits, gravy,
grits, and — without a doubt — chicken-n-waffle.

An Entertainment Bonanza

Me and Mary and ElayneI don’t know if it’s possible to really explain Marty and Elayne. At least, I don’t think anyone could express exactly what it’s like to see them, to hear them.

Marty and Elayne are a husband-and-wife lounge act who perform nightly at a Los Angeles restaurant/lounge called the Dresden. This place is the toniest. It’s all brown velour walls and furniture and gold light fixtures. Circular booths and small tables surround a baby grand piano ringed with a counter and chairs.

Elayne sits at the piano with a pile of sheet music and a couple of extra Casiotone keyboards. Next to her is Marty and his stand-up bass, with a drum kit on the side just in case. Marty is the stone-faced protector of Elayne, the ethereal artist who lives through the music she plays. It sweeps her away, and Marty makes sure everyone respects that. Together, as they’ve done for the last twenty years, they wail out popular favorites and old standards. They don’t just perform simple smarmy covers, though. Every song is transformed into something unique, something unbelievable, something bordering on the incomprehensible.

Without fail, they start every song in a simple way, with either Marty singing in his pitch-for-pitch Sinatra voice, or Elayne in her own jazzy, high-frequency way. After a verse and a chorus, though, the fun begins. Elayne scats. She scats like a cat in heat. She scats in song and plays improvised, otherwordly riffs on the piano. Marty keeps the beat and keeps it strong, plucking or pounding away a steady rhythm that moves Elayne along like a runaway roller coaster. The overall effect seems pretty cheesy, but there’s something about it — something way beyond the humor and the impossible.

You see, these guys have passion for what they’re doing. They’re serious and it shows. If they were just going along in a happy state of shtick, I don’t think it would work. It would be too over the top. This is the real thing, and it makes all the difference. Their enthusiasm is infectious. Of course, I saw people in the room who were watching them with a superior, Lettermanesque shit-eating grin, but most everyone, the people who looked like they kept coming back, was having fun: they all really appreciated Marty and Elayne in a goofy way. Dresden is by no means a cheap gin joint. There’s no cover, but people wouldn’t pay those drink prices if the show wasn’t worth it.

Marty and Elayne perform a huge selection of tunes, mostly on request, like
“Girl from Ipanema,” “Staying Alive,” “Fever,” “Mack the Knife,” “Muskrat Love” and other crowd-pleasers. The most amazing number I heard of them all, by far, was “Light My Fire.” This transcended mere performance. I think it transcended mere music. With Elayne taking the vocal reins and the keyboards, and Marty on the drums, these two wailed away in a frenzy I couldn’t have ever expected. I haven’t seen musicians swept away like that in a looooong time. All hail Marty and Elayne, keeping the sanctity of the lounge alive!

Boogie Nights at the Moonlight Rollerway

When was the last time you went roller skating? I don’t mean sleek rollerblades, I mean four thick wheels, big orange stopper in the front, disco blaring all around you. that’s what happened to me and my friends at the Moonlight Rollerway in Glendale.

We were originally attracted by the novelty of going to the only rink in California that had a real organ player, but we found that it was the organist’s day off, and the rink was actually a time capsule from 1982.

Now in 1983, I was a regular patron of Skate Odyssey on Staten Island in New York. Moonlight had all the same elements that defined my early adolescent years — earth-toned rugs, slushees, disco balls, and “Jam On It.” They were even having a birthday party for some kid while we were there, and he got his own solo skate on the rink.

I would only sound gushy and totally retro if I spent too much time raving about the fun to be had here for four dollars, so I’ll keep it simple. We did a disco hokey-pokey on skates. We ate a big soft pretzel. We skated to “Double Dutch,” “YMCA,” and even Elvis. I learned I could still skate backwards, and my friend Monica, a Ph.D. candidate in religion and philosophy, was so moved that she stripped down to a catsuit to boogie on the rink. I’m sure all the twelve-year-olds will never be the same again.

Gawking in L.A.

Dan Rhatigan, your resident megalomaniacal self-publisher, wrote, lived, and photographed this shocking tale of disaster and wonderment.

Accommodations provided by Northwest Airlines and the sinister Dr. Lau.

This was my first time
Wow.

I mean it — wow. Wow. Wow! Freakin’ WOW!

I just returned from my first trip out West — a brief week in Los Angeles
to visit my oldest pal Eddie and see what the whole West Coast thing was
like. It would be a criminal understatement to say that I got my money’s
worth from my discount airfare tickets. I got adventure, trash, sorrow,
glamour, nostalgia, chicken and waffles, and natural disaster. Bad omens,
however, started pouring in as I left Boston. I left work early so I could get a head start to the airport for a six-thirtyish flight. I optimistically (foolishly, whichever) ignored the warnings of snow, fiercely determined to escape to the land of seventy-six-and-sunny come hell or high water. The plane left a little late, but I wasn’t too worried, since I had a direct flight, needing only to switch to a different plane with the same flight number in Minneapolis. (You can see this coming, right?)

I packed my warmer layers into my tote bag and checked it once I reached the airport. I patiently waited at the airport, eavesdropping on a conversation between a jappy girl and a trashy family as they compared notes on their respective trips to Portugal. This girl was sitting around reading, and soon the thirteenish daughter from the family recognized her and started interrogating her about her vacation. Soon, the whole bunch got into the act, bombarding the slightly horrified young lady with ardent small talk. At one point, she was struck dumb when the young son of the family started asking her about her romantic life, and if she knew “Joe Escobar,” apparently a friend of the family’s in Portugal. I left before I started to suffer brain rot.

The plane ride itself was uneventful as those things go. The selection of music was catastrophically poor — the blandest possible assortment of inoffensive pop hits and country-western ditties. This was not the best assortment for someone who prefers music that’s a little more challenging. The in-flight news and travel show, a shameless promotional vid by the airline, was a paltry attempt to distract the passengers from the fact that we were getting no movie. Again, it was meant to be singularly inoffensive. Their little travel info pieces on different cities like San Francisco and New Orleans would suggest that every city in the country is a pleasant racial mix, straight, and affluent. A lifelong city-dweller, I was skeptical. The news was little more than entertainment dreck profiling Michael Bolton and some retail magnate. Admittedly, though, I have never been one to enjoy lowest-common-denominator entertainment. Craving distraction from that cultural vacuum, I scarfed down free snacks (those honey-roasted peanuts aren’t as bad as standup comedians would have us believe, don’t you think?) and Cokes (they’ll give you a full can of Coke as opposed to a thimbleful of anything else) and struck up conversation with the guy sitting next to me, a music scene guy from Minneapolis who was visiting his sister in Beantown. We talked about the state of rock clubs in Boston and junk like that, and I thought it was really wacky that you can have a long conversation with someone while traveling without exchanging names, since they’re largely unimportant. I started getting nervous when the airline began to make announcements about which connecting flights had already left Minneapolis, since they made no mention about the fate of the flight I was on. I’m a pretty unseasoned traveler, so I had no idea how these direct (as opposed to non-stop) flights operated.

Continue reading “Gawking in L.A.”