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Dangerous dispatches
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Vincent Zandri's blog
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18 January, 2010, 14:15 Bar Pool (Part II)
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Whenever Gina and I venture into a local bar to play pool, it’s impossible for us to go unnoticed. Not that we stand out in the crowd, but we don’t exactly fit in either. We tend to dress ourselves in dark clothing. Black boots, black leather jackets, black turtleneck sweaters. Our look is more contemporary Paris, Berlin or Moscow than it is upstate New York where the fashion du jour is a pair of worn work boots, faded jeans and flannel work shirt stained with paint, concrete spatter or motor oil. Just by entering a gin mill, we cause the place to go eerily silent while all eyes become focused on our very presence. We can feel the glares burning into our backsides like lasers.
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It’s a typical winter’s night for us tonight at Tommy’s. The dimly lit, square-shaped joint houses little clusters of middle-aged men, two or three strong that take their respective places at the horseshoe-shaped bar. Men with beards and mustaches. Men who have been drinking since getting off work at three. Men who have reached an age where hope for a better life is no longer a possibility and dreams have given over to desperation fueled with Jack and beer.
One man in particular sits in a far corner, just staring at us. His smooth shaven face is painted with a black tattoo of banana-shaped swirls and line-stripes, a la Mike Tyson. Sitting closer to us, another man is trying to play grab-ass with the bartender, a 30-something brunette who’s wearing a tight, low-cut sweater, her chest oozing out the V-shaped opening.
As usual, we set our quarters on the old Brunswick table, and watch for anyone who might approach us. Within moments, that someone appears. He’s a short, stocky, mustached man in boots and leather bomber.
Gina gives me one of those looks (Photo by Vincent Zandri) |
“That’s my table,” he says. “I won the last game.”
This is where I shed the game face for the PR face.
Smiling, I pose, “Is it okay if my girlfriend and I play with each other?”
Then realizing what I just said and how it must have sounded, I burst out in laughter. But mustache man isn’t laughing. He’s peering at us through a set of invisible beer goggles with more than your average amount of suspicion. He’s thinking, Are they playing me for the fool? Alcohol will do that to a man. Especially a small man who likes to handle himself like a big man. He stares glassy eyed down at the empty table, then paints a grin on his face.
“Gotta settle a grudge with the old lady, huh?”
Me, still smiling.
“Something like that,” I agree.
And just like that, Gina and I are ready to rack ‘em up.
Having won the last game, she gets first refusal at breaking. But she relinquishes with a warm smile, complimenting me on my breaking ability.
“You’re much better at it,” she tells me, squeezing my arm. It will be the last nice thing she will say to be throughout the game.
I break, sending two stripes or, high-balls, into side and corner pockets, and a solid or, low ball, into yet another side pocket. It’s my best break yet. A good break is more than just physics. A whole new world of possibilities collides with one another whenever that cue ball slams into the tight triangular collection of balls.
The artist making sure the cue is straight and level (Photo by Vincent Zandri) |
I proceed to drop another highball, and another. Then two more. I’ve nearly accomplished what for me is a near impossibility: running the table.
Gina is standing behind me in stylish black skirt and boots. I can’t really see her, but I sense the heat coming off her body like fumes from an oil furnace. When I turn to look at her, I see that her smile has vanished, her normally glowing green eyes now peering out at me through narrow slits. She’s holding her tongue, but I now know that the Gina I have come to know intimately over the past few months is no longer present. Gina is gone, giving way to a personality that is altogether different; the personality of the competitor, a take-no-prisoners-burn-as-you-go-General Sherman.
I sink another ball. From behind me, I make out a faint grunt. I have one ball left on the table. After that, only the 8-ball separates me from sure victory. I line up for what is a difficult bank shot. I miss. Facing Gina, I go to hand her the cue and rub her shoulder. But she shrugs it off.
“Now I know you’ve been letting me win,” she exhales with such painful scorn, it’s as if the words are tearing themselves from the back of her throat.
Without another word, she stares down at a table full of solids. Lining up, she takes her first shot, sinks the ball. The cue positioned perfectly for a follow-up shot, she sinks that one too. The artist proceeds to sink each and every low ball, retaking the lead in one, slow, methodical, uninterrupted display of bar pool skill.
Maybe Gina thinks I let her win on occasion, but nothing could be further from the truth. I’m about to prove it too when, after handing me back the cue, I line up to sink my last highball. It’s one of those difficult long, across-the-table shots. But I line it up, and sink it cleanly.
That leaves the 8-ball.
I have no choice but to bank it off a far corner, attempt to sink it in an opposite corner. I line up the shot, and let lose with the cue. But I’m not even close.
Once more, Gina retrieves the cue from me. I smile at her but she just gives me a look. You know, the look. The one that says, Say one word… just one word… and you’re not getting anything for weeks. I know better than to speak up when I get the look.
Gina leans her torso over the table, pool cue extended out before her, right eye laser beamed in on the 8-ball that lies across the table. Behind me, the entire bar falls silent. It’s as if the tension of our little friendly “grudge match” can be felt in each and every one of the barflys’ chests. And it can. Even I am secretly hoping she sinks the ball.
She shoots.
The cue ball careens across the worn felt. It strikes the 8-ball with a solid, almost satisfying, crack! The 8-ball shoots hard against a corner pocket. It bounces against the back of the pocket, pops back out, slams against both side bumpers like a basketball against a rim.
The smile says it all - Gina beats Vin...Again (Photo by Vincent Zandri) |
Just when it seems like the ball might pop back out of the pocket something amazing happens. It teeters back on the edge of the table and, like a diver slowly leaning her total body weight off a cliff edge, slowly falls and sinks into the pocket.
It’s over. Gina has beat me fair and square. Much to my and everyone’s relief.
Setting the cue back onto the table, the victor turns to me. I see then that the real Gina is back. She’s giving me those pouty little green eyes that always make me melt; a sly little smile to go with them. She slowly shuffles her way over to me, plants a kiss on my lips.
“Sorry I got upset,” she whispers. “But you know how I get when I play pool. I gotta win!” Then, reaching into her bag for more quarters. “How about one more game?”
I shake my head. I’ve had enough relaxation for one night. We decide to finish our drinks at the bar. But before we gather our things, the short, stocky, mustached man shows back up.
Keeping with the rules of the house, we have no choice but to offer up the chance for him to play the winner. Gina stares him down. She’s not saying a word, but she’s shouting volumes.
Her green eyes say, “Go ahead, make my day!”
Mustache man gets the message. He bites his bottom lip, cocks his head.
“On second thought,” he mumbles, “It’s gettin’ late.”
He walks back over to the opposite side of the bar, disappears into the darkness. But I know precisely what he’s feeling. That some bar pool wars are better left unwaged.
13 January, 2010, 20:41 Bar Pool (Part I)
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What do you get when you combine 8-ball with a blue collar bar full of inebriated construction workers, sexy mini-skirted bartenders, some Johnny Cash blaring from the jukebox, and a girlfriend who possesses a competitive streak that makes Lance Armstrong look like your average couch-potato?
Very often you end up with a reason for not having ventured out in the first place, leaving the pool table to those big-boned, beer gutted musclemen who prefer to pocket-slam each and every shot in order to further prove their virility. Listen dear reader, maintaining a rail-smooth relationship with any woman minus the sharp banks can be difficult enough without having to add bar pool to the already bumpy love equation.
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There’s dangerous….and then there’s bar pool. But then there’s challenging your girlfriend to a game of bar pool and you increase the level of danger to something resembling DefCon 4.
Truth is, while I’m definitely a fool for love, I was never much of a pool player. As often as I frequent the local bars and gin mills in my New York hometown, I’ve relegated the pool table to something only those with skills attempt. By skills, I mean those men and women who grew up with a pool table in their basement or in their recreation room and who therefore know what their doing.
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Pool, like skiing, skating or even bowling, is a sport to which one is doomed to mediocrity unless having first been first introduced to it at an early age. Say age five, for instance. Anyone like me who has only dabbled on occasion in the barroom pastime is relegated to being the one person no one wants to partner up with or play against, unless forced to do so. Which, of course, means that for years I avoided the pool table out of simple fear. Who wants to humiliate oneself in front of an entire bar of scantily clad women and burly men?
It wasn’t until recently that I realized that no matter how poor my pool playing skills, I can still be taught to play a competent game. Like an old dog who defies the odds, it actually is possible for me to learn some new tricks. I might never have known this had my significant other of the past six months, a New York artist/college professor by the name of Gina, not encouraged me to pick up a pool cue and shoot a game or two.
Anyone who’s ever spent time with a visual artist who regularly shows their work in some of the most respected New York galleries, knows full well that the last place on earth you might catch them passing the time is inside some seedy bar, slamming back a couple of Buds while playing back to back games of 8-ball. But that’s what this particular artist calls fun. And since I consider hanging out in some of the world’s most dangerous, if not despicable, dives where some of the greatest fun you have is with your clothes on, I naturally accepted the offer.
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But before I go further, there needs to be some clarification on just what constitutes bar pool culture. First of all, bar pool is entirely different from pool hall pool. In a pool hall, the players are a different caliber than that of the barflies who frequent the corner gin mill. Pool halls are made for serious players who abstain from alcohol while engaging in complicated games of “billiards” the likes of 9-ball, bank pool and one pocket.
The men and women who frequent pool halls understand the physics behind cue sport trickery like “cuts shots,” “double shots,” and “two-rail reverse shots.” What’s more, they aren’t afraid to attempt them with an entire crowd of revelers watching over them. They often team up and compete in leagues and are knowledgeable about only the best pro tables, what they cost, their ability to maintain a level balance and more. They also store lots of useless cue sports trivia inside their gray matter. Did you know that Mary the Queen of Scots was wrapped up in her billiards cover when she died? Did you further know that Shakespeare was a big billiards fan, having coined the infamous phrase, “Let’s to billiards?” Even Thomas Jefferson snuck a pool table into his Monticello mansion, even though it was against the law to engage in the gambler’s sport in the new America. Mozart, Abraham Lincoln, Marie Antoinette, Napoleon, Dickens, Tolstoy and even Immanuel Kant loved to play pool. I break, therefore I am. So why should it be so shocking that my gifted artistic girlfriend should love to pass the time over a pool table?
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Bar pool can be found in just about any drinking establishment that sports a pool table. Preferably an old Brunswick model that harkens back to the 1960s or 70s, is horribly out of balance, its cues warped, its bumpers worn out, its green felt having long faded and now stained with all manner of liquor, beer and Buffalo chicken wing hot sauce. Upscale cocktail lounges, country clubs, sushi bars, hotel lobbies, TGIF Fridays and all manner of upscale eateries do not count. Nor does playing at home, even if you’re pounding a few Vodkas with your best buds over a gimmicky billiards game like “Screw Your Neighbor.”
Bar pool is played in low-lit juke joints, gin mills, road houses, grilles, and shacks usually patroned by a blue collar clientele like iron workers, cement contractors, roofers, laborers, factory workers, bikers, ex-cons and more. We’re talking joints with simple, no-nonsense names like “Tommy’s,” “Thatcher Street,” “Jillian’s,” “Olympic Bowl,” and “Andy’s.”
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Several types of watering holes are suitable for housing a good game of bar pool. There’s the bikini bar, where the bartenders are extremely attractive, scantily clad women. There’s the bowling alley, which always houses a big bar with a pool table that no one uses until late at night, after the lanes have shut down. Then there’s the local bar that’s strictly for getting drunk. Such places might also sport a dart board, a couple of TVs and a jukebox that no uses except on Friday for drunken line dancing. These establishments usually charge a dollar (in quarters) for the privilege of playing a single game. The standard etiquette that must be followed for any would-be pool player from Portland, Maine to Portland Oregon, is that one should respectfully set one’s quarters onto the table in order to play the winner of the previous game. Failing to abide by that one strict rule can easily get one’s nose broken in several places if not careful. Man or woman.
But it’s in this kind of “Barbary Shore” rough-neck environment that my classically trained, Master of Fine Arts-holding, college prof girlfriend wants to spend her evening. As a beer drinker, I should be happy. But what I’m about to find out is that it’s not only the bar and its inebriated tough-guy clientele that pose the danger. The real danger is about to come from Gina herself. Turns out, she doesn’t like to lose under any circumstance. Not even to the one man she has promised her heart. Under that creative shroud lies the heart and mind of a savage competitor and a famished wolf all dressed up in a Soho artist’s tall black boots, leggings and miniskirt.
Or so I’m about to find out the hard way.
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31 December, 2009, 16:03 Flight 253: A Wakeup to War Call for the World
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On December 25th, a young Yemeni national sets out to commit mass murder in the skies over the US. Taking his place in line at the Amsterdam Airport (Schiphol) Delta Airlines ticket counter, the boyish looking, 23-year-old man purchases a one-way ticket with cash. He carries no luggage.
The son of a wealthy Nigerian banker, the man, whose name is Umar Farouk Abdulmetallab, is a committed Muslim. He also belongs to a 550,000-person-strong international security watch-list identifying suspected radical-Muslim terrorists. International law however, permits him to fly the friendly skies.
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Maybe the Delta ticket issuer is aware of his suspected-terrorist-who-can-fly status, but how is he or she to know that inside his underwear, Abdulmetallab is storing enough high-explosive powder and charges to bring down a passenger jet?
Most of the six hour, fifty minute flight proves uneventful. That is until the final 10 minutes, when a flight attendant begins to smell smoke. That acrid smoke is coming from the 80 grams of high-explosive charge which has turned into an incendiary device immediately after Abdulmutalleb triggered what turns out to be a faulty detonator. The fire that spreads from his BVDs to his assigned seat spread fast, from floor to baggage compartment.
Chaos at 30,000 feet ensues.
Flight attendants scream, passengers panic, children cry. Even the pilot sounds “nervous” when loudly and forcefully he exclaims “Emergency Landing” over the intercom.
Subdued by brave and vigilant passengers, the now badly burned, would-be Al Qaeda bomber does not fight back. As the fire is doused, the flight captain puts the pedal-to-the-metal and guns the plane into a near nose-dive for its emergency landing. It might be a terrifying, if not traumatic, way to end an overseas flight, but at least the 277 passengers and crew make it to Detroit in one piece.
In a next-morning interview for US national television, an obviously shaken Director of Homeland National Security, Janet Napolitano, is quoted as saying, “the system worked.” Feigning confidence, she adds, “Everybody played an important role here. The passengers and crew of the flight took the appropriate action…So the whole process of making sure that we respond properly, correctly and effectively went very smoothly.”
Not surprisingly, when an outraged America hears these words coming from the very woman who is supposed to be heading up our most coveted security agency, an amended statement is promptly issued. But this time, instead of claiming the system worked, Napolitano admits the sad truth: “The system failed miserably.”
Why?
Because there is no system for preventing terror in the skies. Not when you must rely on civilians to fight trained bombers. There is no system when your program of security is based entirely upon the principal of waiting until a terrorist attack occurs first. Then, and only then, do we react. Had average citizens not responded appropriately and selflessly to the flight 253 crisis, nearly 300 people would have become casualties of the ongoing terror war. “War” being the key word here.
While the US has been hunkered down trying to pass socialized medicine, the “War on Terror”—and it is a world war—has been pushed to the back of the priority line. Fact is, while the Obama administration placidly ignores the hostile Muslim radicals who hide behind God to justify their murderous raison d’etre, they have been able to re-organize and devise new plans and strategies for attacking the West. How do we fight this terrorist war in the skies? How do we defend ourselves without making it up as we go?
While the academics and left wing politicos ponder enemy-friendly solutions like trying to understand what motivates their anger towards us, more and more bombers are “on their way.” That is according to Abdulmutalleb, who revealed to officials just days ago that Al Qaeda is gearing up to hit more Americans who fly. According to Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism czar, “They know that this is a weakness and an Achilles’ heel in our airport security system.” But if our airport security system is our Achilles’ Heel, than an undermined, understaffed, underpowered, and inept Department of National Homeland Security is our soft underbelly.
With another air attack seemingly imminent in the near future, here are just a few state-of-dire-emergency steps I propose we undertake to make things more immediately safe:
- Barack Obama must get tough. He must issue a live broadcast in which he makes an international declaration of war on Al Qaeda and all radical Muslim fundamentalists, including the countries and organizations that harbor them. A similar declaration was made during the Bush administration, but Mr. Obama needs to reiterate it and do it now. The Western world needs to know he’s willing to fight evil Muslim fundamentalists, not empathize with them or, at the very least, ignore them.
- Transfer the Department of National Homeland Security to the military. Put the war experts in charge of fighting this new kind of war.
- Without question, place at least two Air Marshals aboard every flight possible, along with at least one bomb-sniffing dog. The move will take up at least two airline seats that would otherwise generate income, but a modest rise in ticket price will more than pay for it.
- Work closely with European counterparts, including the military, to weed out suspected terrorist suspects and place them in an accessible data base much like the one that already exists. But in this case, under no circumstances should a suspect be allowed to fly unless placed under restraint and accompanied by armed guards.
- Institute Emergency Social Profiling. This will, of course, anger a lot of Civil Libertarians, but what’s the one thing the terrorists have in common? They’re all Muslim. Naturally, most of these people are peace-loving and are ashamed of what the radicals have done to their religion. But the “bad apple” rule applies here. Airports need to screen for the Muslim faith and then respectfully make an educated guess as to whether or not the passenger poses a threat.
- Install full body-scan machines in all international airports. This is actually being accomplished in America and Europe, but thus far it’s slow going.
- Reinstitute and/or maintain Patriot Act wiretap provisions so that emails, cell phones and other types of personal communications belonging to suspected terrorists can be accessed by law.
Whether you agree with any of these suggestions or not is up to you. But I do invite you to comment at will. The point here is not that I’m hateful of Muslims, or siding with conservatives (I’m an independent), or don’t support basic human rights. The point is that we’re at war with radical fundamentalists who will stop at nothing to see Westerners and Jews slaughtered both on the ground and in the air. The point also, is that thus far, the Obama administration’s observance to national and international security is “catastrophically” weak.
I hope that before another evil man like Umar Abdolmutallab is able to sneak aboard a passenger jet full of innocent civilians and this time, succeed in blowing it out of the sky in the name of Allah, that Obama realizes that what he’s dealing with is as serious as the Nazi threat the world faced so many decades ago. There’s simply no place for peace, love and understanding when it comes to Muslim murderers. Perhaps we had to resort to racial profiling during World War II, but it was a necessary evil that aided in the destruction of a far greater evil. One that, like radical Muslim fundamentalism, will succeed at wiping out entire races of peace-loving people if left unchecked.
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About author
Vincent is a freelance journalist and the author of the bestselling novel As Catch Can and the forthcoming Moonlight Falls. For more information visit his personal website.
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14 January, 2010, 23:09
With that opening question, I thought you were going to answer, One Fun Night!
14 January, 2010, 15:00
Mr. D,
Well since we live in tiny SmAlbany and the rest of the world hardly ever gets to see our little slice of heaven, I'm able to get away with a little "artistic license" when it comes to describing a joint like Jillian's as a "low-lit juke joint." Or perhaps I meant to write, "low-life juke joint?" Ha! In any case, it's a great place to play pool, have a few beers and listen to those Punk Rock Dads, The Blisterz, rock out!
VZ
14 January, 2010, 03:42
like it
13 January, 2010, 20:02
Interesting article Mr. Zandri.
Two observations or comments ...
* Not sure you can really classify 'Jillian's' as a low-lit juke joint or gin mill...the ones I've seen are actually a chain of sports bars...with very nice lighting and cool wide screen TV's I might add. ;)
* Try taking on this Gina character in Wii Billiards. Maybe you will have shot at beating her on that!
Keep these GREAT dispatches coming!!!