Notes from the Upper West Side. A novel by Dan Wrench. CHAPTER XIII Ladies and Gentlemen, Bangalore Springfield. One of Park's pals back then was, and I guess still is, an Indian stand-up comic named Bangalore Springfield.
You haven't heard of him. Or hell, who knows. By the time anyone reads this, he may have had his friars roast already or whatever it is they call that thing they do on that channel. I saw his act down at Viders once.
It was okay. You know, at least it wasn't embarrassing to watch like a lot of live comedy shows. His act is pretty much about what it's like to be a goofy foreigner in a goofy country, with goofy parents, and a goofy job while trying to fuck somebody with a sweet ass. It is act.
He's got this thick Indian accent. In real life, he sounds like he comes from Brooklyn or maybe Providence or Vyland. He also has this almost permanent squint in his right eye that everyone notices, but nobody mentions. On that first day of shooting Little Round Jewish hat, two days after vanquishing the wife in the previously narrated No Holds Bar domestic Smackdown, Bang and I were standing sort of next to each other while the film crew did film crew work just a few feet away.
He had this big grin on his face like he was thrilled to be there. Amateur. Park was up on a ladder twisting a bolt into a big theater light. I just finished asking him if he was still enjoying Christine the hot blonde 40 year old woman.
I was seeing Christine for a couple of months, he said, but she kept telling me that women don't like guys with really long hair, and women don't like guys who spend a lot of time shopping for moisturizers, and women don't like guys who look at themselves in the mirror all the time. Wow, I get cackled. In other words, women don't like you. Uh, bang laughed.
The laugh took me by surprise. It was like hearing them goos hit up. Yeah, part said. Finally, I told her to stop calling yourself women.
Ha, said bang. You tell my wife I'm a man. I'm going to the slightest idea with men want you think because you got a G-spat, you get to speak for the four billion other people with G-spats. I have a nose and speaking is the head of a nose.
I'd like you to stop talking and stop blowing. Start blowing your nose. I asked. Good catch.
Said bang. I should definitely change that to sucking fucking comics. Every conversation is a reversal. We'll make it about something besides your cock.
Said Bobby whispers who was up on another ladder next to parks. Oh no. He's a show business. He has to be a blowjob.
Bobby gave him a funny look. Bang gave him a funny look back. Park was grim. Well, it's really funny.
He said is that they think they know what women want because it's what they, their friends and Oprah want. They don't know you can walk three blocks and find women who think Oprah is a frigid twat. Yeah, said bang. A-bong, a low E-side.
Then Bobby said, mond it pretty much thinks Oprah's a frigid. You know, you're shitting me. I laughed. Maybe not in those words, but um, you know what?
I'm going to tell her that, but she may put it in her next tattoo. I laughed. Bang did that goose kick up again. Heh heh heh.
What a bastard. Whispers, I mean. In case you don't know, Mondie McDade wrote Not On The Hood Of My Car, which was on the radio five times an hour in the summer of 83, and she had tattoos which were not really that common on babes in the age. In his Rolling Stone interview, Derek Mool of The Belly Shells said that the best blowjob he'd ever gotten was from Mondie McDade.
I think Oprah's a frigid twat. It was a chick's voice, so we all turned to look. The voice belonged to a stand-in sitting on the set getting lights on her. Pretty.
Dark. Hey! What's sitting out on the chairs? Is Oprah a fidget twat or what?
They all shouted, twat and fuck Oprah. Some of them clapped. I've got a fidget twat. Oprah can suck.
One of them said, rigid. I've got a stiff little post to twat to lick for me. I think I may have shivered a little. It was like, this is my home and these are my people, babes who say things like, suck my snatch and gimme that cock.
I curse myself for all the times I take in them for granted. And right now, remembering those lovely sloppy girls who I later denounce in a fit of middle class, what to wear, brought on by a reawaken spirituality. Oh god, if I can only go back in time and kick myself in the balls. A tear nearly comes to my eye.
Just remembering that day we shot the little round Jewish hat. That first day. I'm getting all misty just from thinking about it. It was a whole mindset.
God, I wish I could go back and hug every single one of the little twats. But enough of that. Back to the damn story. Actually, that first day we were shooting only a couple scenes from the video.
They were going to shoot a couple more down to Viders the next day. Here's how that first day's location was laid out. We were at a tiny theater in the garment district of New York City about three blocks from Madison Square Garden. Shooting in a black box off off Broadway is a lot cheaper than renting a soundstage someplace.
All the sound was going to be rerecorded in a studio anyway, so nobody cared about the sound of the car horns and the sirens and the pneumatic drills that bled in from the street while shooting the image. The tiny off off theater? It was called Hannibal's Demise. That's where a parpen pals decided to do their shooting.
Our shooting. Picture this. You walk into a small office building. You go to the elevator bank at the back of the lobby and there's a big door next to the elevator doors.
Over this door is a sign that says Hannibal's Demise. The guy who rents the place out pronounces it the Mee's. Yes, he is a pansy. You go through that big door.
Suddenly you're surrounded by risers. On the risers are chairs like movie theater chairs. There's an aisle through these risers that leads to a so-called stage that's really just a platform one foot off the floor and painted black. Everything is painted black.
If you took the stage and risers out it would look exactly like the empty cellar in the house of a suburban dominatrix. The stage walls were draped in bright green fabric so that a different background could be composited in later like they did with the Star Wars. You can do that shit on a Mac. Parpen ended up doing it for a little round Jewish hat.
The stand-in, the pretty dark chick who screamed out his Oprah a frigid to watch or what, was sitting right in the middle of the stage about five feet in front of the green screen. The chicks who called back to her were sprawled out in the theater seats on the risers like a bunch of mostly fuckable girls' lobs, coats everywhere, a prop table, big boxes of crap, a portable freezer for sodas and a table with donuts and coffee. You've got to have your donuts and coffee. And whispers in parp, like I said, they were climbing around on ladders along the green screen with some blonde brick boy they called the Gaffitographer because he was both cinematographer and gaffer.
They had tape and twine in a big stapler they kept handing back and forth. There were two guys with black t-shirts adjusting settings on the camera really carefully like it was a nuclear weapon. These guys in the camera were between the stage and the risers. The only in bang were standing kind of next to the camera guys.
We each had a cup of coffee in our hands. Makeup babe was about to get to us. Costing babe had just checked our insides. Ever meet one of those chicks who was essentially an armpit in a jumpsuit.
That was costing babe. So no inseam to the relation that day. Sitting just behind us was Lenny Payne the star of the video. The guy who sings the song and loses his namaka.
He was getting all made up and wearing this costume that was just some lame suit that a college prof might wear. His jacket with elbow patches was pitched out on the risers somewhere behind him until he was actually needed on the set. A young girl maybe 15 with an incredible rack and exposed cleavage was making up his hands for quite a sec. So what are you doing here?
Bang ask me. I'm an actor, hence the makeup and threads. I said, oh yeah? Me too.
No makeup though. For some reason my skin is brownish colored already. He took a sip of his coffee from the donut shop paper cup. Maybe they could make my eyebrows dog.
Your eyebrows are to die for. So what are you doing in real life? Yes. What's your job?
What do you mean? What's your job? How do you make a living? Well, I'm an actor slash model.
I mean you're not modeling it like this life is what you do. I thought you were a botan that one of the blunnies sounds in midtown. Nope. I cleared my throat.
You know, self-deprecating coffee. If you watch sitcoms, you know the kind of coffee I mean. I tend to bar it one of the Irish taverns in midtown, the one on 50th near Broadway. And of course you would not want to be mistaken for a blunnies donut.
Shit. I'm thinking a second ago I was an actor and I'm a fucking bartender. Did part tell you that that I'm a bartender? I don't know, is it a secret?
Well, why are you so touchy about it? We all have big jobs. Although the comedy thing is kind of picking up for me. Well, I've been getting some good bites and auditions I said.
He smiled at me like he could tell I was full of shit. So I said, were you born in India? I'm Jewish, I was born in a story. But you do such a great Indian accent.
I tell you they call it an act. She's a sis. Now who's being defensive? I'm not being defensive.
I'm yanking a chain patch. You know what it's busting in balls. Or your chops. Your shoes.
Stop you when I hit it now and you recognize. Hey, I said don't you find this whole video with a green something? What do you mean? You don't find it just a touch anti-Semitic?
Why? Because the Jew gets the goil because he sings and dances in broad daylight and looks. I was thinking the whole thing about calling your yarn cut a little round Jewish hat. He laughed.
What? So we should call it a large-wair of hat. This is starting to piss me off. Bang looked up at parp on the ladder.
Hey, pop! He laughed. You ate the semi-yew. How dare you call it a little round Jewish hat?
Parp looked at bang and throw at his brow. Then you looked at me. He rolled his eyes. Bang laughed again.
I really wanted to spotlight off me. So what's your real name? I asked thinking I might get him on the defensive for a second. What do you mean?
He asked. He can't be bangle or spring field. Of course not. Then what is it?
Ringo Calzone. You're shitting me. Yes. He said I am shitting you.
How do you talk to a guy like that? I was already defined someplace else to stand when he said, Hey, doesn't quite living work at the Irish don't want him? You know him? Wow.
Sentenced that wasn't trying to kick my ass. Yeah? I said, went to school with him too. Tends bar in the restaurant at the Commodore Hotel though.
It's kind of down the street from where I work. Bang crushed his cup. Liddy really hates pop, huh? He said.
Sure seems like it. Notes from the Upper West Side is a work of fiction. The people depicted in this work do not exist. Notes from the Upper West Side.
Copyright 2013 to 2014. By Dan Rench.