1995nov16. I haven’t been dancing in a long time. As winter approaches, the desire to regularly attend a club-type locale rears its ugly head once again. I am not a club person, but I get lots of sorely-needed exercise from dancing. My friends expressed interest in “going out”; we are all approaching the time of our lives when “going out” will no longer involve any physical activity more taxing than hailing cabs. There is a dance club located on Fourth Street in Old Town, that will have to suit our needs for the night. A majority of this club’s playlist is standard dance hits from 1993. I am not the type of techno-oriented faux-DJ-type person who believes that anything over six months old is right out, but I do have my limits. As we entered, we were suddenly accosted by a magician hired by the club to entertain the drunken hedonistic masses. You could tell that THIS was exactly what today’s modern yoot wanted in the form of club amenities. Pick a card. Any card. Is this your card. Feel this steel ring. Hold this ring. Hold this rope. Take these scissors. Cut this rope. I cut the deck, and they’re ALL aces! I don’t like magic; there’s too much free labor involved. I was pretending to be much more interested in the large video screens showing cheesy computer graphic demos ([Note: it is in this parenthetical note that I remind the reader that I can say anything I want to, without adhering to “context” or “sense.” Thank you.] Are any of them good? Why does everything have to be so goddamn realistic? Let’s stop pretending and go back to the halcyon days of the Atari 2600. A block was a tank, a plane, or a bomb, and you used whatever was left of your brain to imagine the damn things. It’s just like music videos. And who in the hell designed the Academy Awards logo? Are these people still alive? This is wrong [the really sad thing here is that this all makes perfect sense to me]). Actually, I wasn’t pretending. Then, one member of our group spots a small shank of rope resting by the magician’s shoe. This, of course, is a magician’s naughty bit, the crux of the “tie knot onto long piece of rope to make it look like two pieces of rope” trick. Hey! This magic is FAKE! Never trust a guy in a turtleneck. On our way out, the magician revealed a trick of the club itself: strippers are given the red carpet treatment there. Free admission, free booze. This explained the overabundance of short skirts, Miracle/Wonder/Amazin'Bras (actually, they’re everywhere now. Even pets have them), and pancake make-up. The magician scrambled to a remote corner of the club to insert Yet Another Magic Prop into his mouth, and continued to work the crowd as we left.
