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02 August 2007

Lunch and a show. A pair of interns, hired not long after I arrived, are heading back for senior year next week, so I took them to a yakiniku (Japanese Korean-style barbecue) joint on 49th (I think, maybe 48th) and Lexington for lunch today.
[More:]
The food was great, and the lunch specials reasonable; we cooked our strips of various meats at the table, and ate it over rice, drank soup, talked about cats and liquor and foreign travel. Great meal.

On the way back to the office, we saw a clearly drunk and likely shermed-out shirtless man walking up the sidewalk in front of us. Blood dripped down his face from multiple cuts on his forehead, and his face was swollen shut as if he'd been punched with a firelog. He shouted unintelligible obscenities as he stumbled along, careening against lightposts, kicking newspaper boxes, tearing payphones from their cradles, and occasionally dropping to his knees to bash his head against the sidewalk.

Eventually several cops came, rolled on their latex gloves, billyclubbed him in the back of the knees, cuffed him and oh-so-gently tossed him in the back of a paddywagon. As the van rolled away, one cop said to another, as he removed his bloody gloves with a snap, tossing them to the pavement, "Fuckin' asshole. Got a smoke?"

I'm sure the glove is still there, lying on the street; I wonder if it'll melt in the heat.
You know why they call it a paddywagon?

Because the Irish are violent and unstable.
posted by Divine_Wino 02 August | 13:49
Ah, city life. Whatever am I doing wasting my life in this rusticated setting?
posted by chuckdarwin 02 August | 14:21
DW, just a few weeks ago, I mentioned a "paddy wagon" a few blocks away. Then I thought a moment, Googled a moment, and said "Oh, damn it. Well, what can I call it?"
posted by Elsa 02 August | 14:24
The Black Maria?

Or maybe not.

What do the fuzz call the durn things?

posted by Miko 02 August | 14:29
I always assumed "paddy wagon" came from the Irish cop stereotype. Huh.
posted by jrossi4r 02 August | 14:30
They're paddy wagons, inside and out. Fuckin' redlegs're drivin' 'em anyway, wot?
posted by Hugh Janus 02 August | 14:32
Yeah. There was this guy in the French Quarter in New Orleans who didn't want you to look at him directly, or address him directly. He might yell horrible things at you, but if you looked at him, or answered, you were in a world of shit...

So, everyone who lived there would just walk by him and never respond, never look at him... which made people who didn't live there freak out and wonder why everyone was so cold and heartless. But, of course, we weren't. We were following his rules, and he managed to hang out there pretty much without incident regarding police, etc., for ... many, many years. He was there when we left in the mid-90s, and I always wondered what happened with him after Katrina.
posted by taz 02 August | 14:52
Call it a paddywagon and be secure in the notion that those filthy Hibernians are locked inside, missing their mothers and smelling of cheap plonk and day labor.
posted by Divine_Wino 02 August | 14:53
Here's where I do the thing where I get serious for a moment. Yesterday this lady approached me while I was outside having a smoke, she was crying and drinking a Budweiser, she looked in a state but not homeless or anything. She asked if I knew anything about getting divorced, I said I didn't. She asked if I was married, I said I was. She told me a story that was very tedious and depressing. I said I'm real sorry honey, about your trouble. That put me on a bummer for a while. I managed to bounce back though. Life is really brutal, often.
posted by Divine_Wino 02 August | 15:00
You listened to her.

Clearly she needed that.

Life is brutal sometimes, yes. But you made it a tiny bit less brutal for her. Good on you.
posted by Elsa 02 August | 15:05
Life doesn't get any better until you forget. That's what living's for: erasing memory.
posted by Hugh Janus 02 August | 15:07
Kind of you to say, it should of course be known that the whole time that she was talking I was wishing she would take her can of beer and fuck off down the road. Lord knows I'm nobody's angel.
posted by Divine_Wino 02 August | 15:10
What you wished for and what you did are two different things. She needed to be heard; she was.

I don't think much of angels. Not much sign of 'em where I am. People who treat other people like, well, people --- they're highly prized.
posted by Elsa 02 August | 15:13
I AM NOT A NICE PERSON!


I'm all about the golden rule.
posted by Divine_Wino 02 August | 15:17
"Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it"

Life doesn't get any better until you forget. That's what living's for: erasing memory.

Hmm, I thought that's what cannabis was for...
posted by appidydafoo 02 August | 15:24
Listen, Divine_Wino, you rolling ball of wax, let's get scotch and go convince strangers to listen to us; I'll be Mac Marklemore and you can choose a moniker out of a hat for all I care. Steep loively, ludd!

You're nice when you wear that tam and the jacket with the elbow patches, like a ginger Wallace Stevens crossed with The Green Monster-monster-monster (Not to be confused with Bigfoot-bigfoot-bigfoot or Truckosaurus Rex-rex-rex).
posted by Hugh Janus 02 August | 15:29
"Nice"? "Nice" can get bent. You seem decent, though, which I value more.

You utter bastardly bastard. There, is better?

Now I'm leaving, ten minutes late but moving fast!
posted by Elsa 02 August | 15:35
Yes Hugh brother. Very soon indeed. And thanks Elsa for your patient attempts to complement me, decency abounds here.
posted by Divine_Wino 02 August | 16:49
Urban Dictionary to the rescue.

Also, Divine Mr Wino, you're a decent bloke no matter what you say. So there. And I agree, lots of decent folk here.
posted by deborah 02 August | 18:00
Oh, for sure I'm decent, possibly even honorable (I like to think), but I'm not sure I want to be nice.
posted by Divine_Wino 02 August | 18:56
Nice is overrated. Decent; however, appears to be a scarcity in this modern world, more's the pity. I would have been thinking exactly the same thing as you, Divine_Wino (or more along the lines of wishing I had 50c to giver so she could call someone who cares), but would have listened anyway, because it's right.
posted by dg 02 August | 19:21
Wow. I just kind of fired someone and it went fine. || Charles Simic next US Poet Laureate!

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