Category Archives: Postcard from the Slope

Here’s the latest from Scott Turner at Rocky Sullivan’s in Red Hook. He sends these great emails to publicize the Pub Quiz.

This really hasn’t been a happy week for, well, the world. The Mumbai attacks…the fiscal meltdown melting downerer…the continual parade of athletes wearing the Idiot’s Crown…consumerism running so rampant that temp worker Jdimytai Damour was crushed to death by pre-dawn WalMart shoppers desperate for holiday bargains…the Benny and Hank Bailout Show, a.k.a Not So Secret Billionaires, continue to flair blindly, clueless to do much besides bailout Wall Street
giants ans the rest of us wonder if there’s anything to eat in
those bags we’re left holding…and pirates, arrrgh, ruling at least
one of the high seas.

In chaotic times — which is, to say, every single
moment of the history of the universe — we sometimes look for signs.
Some of us, because we believe. Others, because we’re told to
believe. And the rest of us, because it’s better than dwelling on
Mumbai-attack New-Depression dopey-ass-blinged-athlete poor-Jdimytai
Demour bailout-fiasco pirateering.

This was the sky last night:

Venus (left) and Jupiter (right) cozied up to our very own Moon
for a once in relatively short liftetimes photo-op. A heavenly happy
face. Well, in the southern hemisphere it was an ode to celestial joy.

Up here in the Northern Hemisphere, it looked different:

Not so smiley, or facial. But still, way frakkin’ cool.

And it cheered me up. Because, astronomically, it’s exceptional,
magificent. You could see it with the naked eye. Both naked eyes,
actually. It felt wildly etherial, like something on the cover of a
1950s sci-fi novelization. The wonder is that it was also real, so
close we could see it without a telescope, t.v. set or Internet
connection. We’ve gotten so used to traveling the world with the click
of a mouse that when other worlds come see us, showing up on our
doorstep like long lost friends visiting on a whim, it takes us by
surprise.

Here at Pub Quiz Actual, Diane, the dogs and I stood watching the Extraterrestrial Three dangle over the rooftops near Green-Wood Cemetery.
Well, the dogs watched us with the wonder of canines baffled by human
behvior. "Like, our Peoples, what’s with standing on the street for no
good reason? Hey, is that Steakums cooking next door?"

Maybe the moon, Venus and Jupiter convened because a star down here burned himself out. Alex Gomez died last week. He jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge
and has yet to be found. A lot of us knew Alex, a fellow-mohawked punk
rocker and human roulette wheel who kept friends and strangers guessing
whether he’d brighten your day or darken your doorstep — sometimes in
the same heartfelt caterwaul of joy and fury. At his memorial service
on Sunday, many Alex-dotes were traded. One woman told of a
snowy-night she and Alex spent making snow angels on a deserted Prospect Heights
street. Viewing their angels from a stoop, as the snow warmed to rain
and started eating away the angels’ wings, Alex asked "do snow angels
feel pain when they die"? The woman related a few more stories about
Alex, then finished up by saying "Well, Alex, tell me — do snow angels feel pain when they die? Do they?!"

It would be maudlin and embarrasing to conflate Alex’s death with
last night’s cosmic convergence. It wasn’t Alex up there messing with
the laws of physics — though there were few laws Alex left alone. It
was just a splendid, rare moment our night sky gave us. One that only
the longest-suriving of us will see again in 2052. And it cheered me
up, for no good reason other than it was pretty and made me stop,
breathe, and feel my eyes widen for reasons not gut wrenching.

This week, Rocky Sullivan’s Pub Quiz is back after a two-week Thanksgiving break. It’ll be a different quiz for three, count ’em, THREE, reasons:

1) We’ll be holding the quiz in Rocky’s main bar area,
not the back room. There’s an event being hosted in our normal
home, so we’ll try the bar area. The Good News? We’re right there by
the bar and kitchen — even easier access to Rocky’s scrumptious edibles and delectable drinkables.

2) It’ll feel like a camp-out in the woods…or spending the night
in the local high-school gym under hurricane conditions. We’ll hunker
down and answer questions and photo rounds and music rounds and
free-prize queries until the storm passes. Cozyness and safety under
unusual circumstances. Except, you know, without the hurricane part.

3) We’re starting A HALF-HOUR EARLIER, at 7:30. Really. We’re gonna try and start at 7:30. REALLY. 7:30. I’m not kidding.

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