photo by Ms.Jen

Erica the Birthday Girl:

Rusty Monday and Christina

Someone should have told this gal that her pants were falling off. Actually, I think it was a look. (Erica, if this is your best friend or sister, I apologize right now). Mostly, I just felt sorry for this gal, because she needed attention so badly, and people were just laughing at her drunk ass. Literally.

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May 27, 2004

LOST IN EAST LA!

It was a carefree evening driving down the 5 freeway, as we headed for East LA with the windows down and the breeze totally screwing up our hair. Yet, there was an air of "bring it on baby" whipping through the car, that is until Frederico lost his way, totally bypassing East LA and ignoring my imploringly "nice" gestures of "I know this area and I think we've gone too far". "I go to Burbank often and we're not too far from there." But, I didn't care, because I had just been to the Boot Barn earlier and snagged a couple of cute shirts on sale, and Carlotta was having problems getting her lip liner on straight, so she was set on her lips, and not the map. Ricardo was along for the ride and the cool cd's playing in the car, until he too realized we were lost and then he got all pissy. When we suddenly approached the hillside of Echo Park, I said to Frederico, "Dammit you stupid bus driver, get the hell off this freeway here, and then turn onto San Fernando Rd. and follow it back, so that WE WILL get to East LA alive, even if we are to die there! (long run on sentence).

So, there we were cruising down San Fernando looking at all the old buildings and taco stands. Our salivating tongues longing for some carne asada while we read the signs - Tacos el carbon, Tacos La Fonda, and on and on. Ricardo with a map in one hand trying to figure out which way was up, or was it North, East, West, South, or "we're going to die" lock the doors.

Finally, we hopped back on the freeway and minutes later we approached the Indiana off ramp. And, then we passed Ditman.

Ditman? That name was pounding through my head, because I remember my mama talking about Ditman Ave. when I was just a little tacquito. What happened on Ditman? Who died there, or lived there, or was robbed there? I could not remember...a sure sign of old age. Well, so much for Ditman.

We finally arrived at Alejandro's house. Please note: If you are ever driving to Alejandro's and it's already dark, all you have to do is follow the big yellow lighted "DIESEL" sign. If it's daytime, you're screwed, so stop and ask for directions. Oh yes, I guess I should tell you the reason for this trip in the first place was to help our loco vato brother and friend, Alejandro, celebrate his 26th birthday, along with 100 other people who had no place to park, much less maneuver two cars down a two inch street at the same time!

At some point there was also cerveza, beer, cerveza and more cerveza. And, did I say beer? Tongues were wagging (literally) and cleavage was aplenty. Betty's, red lips, pomps, and tatts ruled. Ahem...well yes, and there was music too - lots of it, from three different houses all next to each other; each having their individual parties. Yihaaa! What a cultural experience! I think Isaw the ghost of Ceasar Chavez sitting on the old Mustang toasting the crowd. But, I thought to myself, "Damn, I never knew Alejandro had this many friends (and good looking too!). And then, I found out they were not his friends but friends of his lovely girl. He confessed to me that unless he drinks he doesn't talk to anyone much, because that is just the way he is - a rather shy young man. I think they call it deprived, and something in my heart softened, so I gave him a special scapula with a prayer. I told him he must repeat it out loud every day, even in public restrooms.

And, then I knew...YES!! The moral of the story is to get a guy who has no friends -- no social life, no popularity, possibly even self-esteem issues. In general, no LIFE, but a helluva nice guy. Then, you tell him what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. It all made perfect sense. It was like a lightening bolt hit me in the head, and I was suddenly transformed!! I knew that my next sermon to the congregation in Calexico was going to be directed to the women, and I would set them straight, once and for all. It would be the forefront of a new era. Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus, but women rule the roost and the cock crows thrice!

Sadly enough, the clock ticked quickly and suddenly, we heard cock-a-doodle-do. It was time for us to pack up the car La Raza style and say our goodbyes. 10 cervezas rolling around in "Frederico's small trunk". What purpose did it serve?? Vitamin P??? That must have been it, because we beheld a very strange sight on the way home. A woman in a parking lot stepped out of her car and let out a flood large enough to be a major oil leak. There she was...reverse spread eagle, and she was...well, watering the plants in a large way?

Never was this night an ordinary night of `Up in Smoke". It was likened to an alien abduction (beam me up Ricardo) and we laughed loud and nervously as we whipped away into the pale moonlight. We sang the rest of the way home: East LA, it's pretty okay - East LA, it'll make your day - East LA, in the middle of May - yeah, East LA, we got there one day, and did it our way!

(Based on a true story. Some names have been changed to protect the innocent and prevent a riot.)

Posted by CindyLu at 9:20 PM | TrackBack

April 18, 2004

Farewell Ray Condo

Many of you have already heard that Ray Condo passed away. I was able to do a little research and came up with some interesting articles in memory of this talented Canadian born musician. Listed below are the links:
May Ray "rest in peace"....he will be missed.

http://music.sympatico.ca/news/stories/news/alt_indie/news_alt_2004041607.html

http://worldwideretro.com/

http://www.countrystandardtime.com/countrynews.html

Posted by CindyLu at 10:38 PM | TrackBack

April 13, 2004

A Night at Pike's

Some people might say, "The night is young and so are we." At Pike's (near the corner of 4th and Cherry in Long Beach) you get some of this and some of that, and a whole lot more. Ms. Howdylicious Wanda from KUCI's Howdylicious radio show (88.9 fm)and DJ Dan from the Dynotones (who will have new and soon to be released CD) have ventured to the beach area recently with some good down home country music. Every Monday at Pike's you'll find a variety of people sitting around the bar eating everything from mahi tacos to veggie burgers, drinking a brew, or hard lemonade, and listening to everything from Johnny Cash to Patsy Cline, and even some International tunes. I've been to the first two Monday night blast offs, and it's going well. Many friends and new acquaintances are coming by to pay homage to the dueling DJ duo. It's a fun time and what better way to spend a Monday night. Are you going to sit home and watch Jeopardy? Get out and meet some new people! Monday night we learned some lessons about life when Sgt. Al decided to share his wisdom. These are known as Al-isms, or the world according to Al.

1. Life's not fair and neither is Al.
2. I don't give a damn about the truth, tell me lies that make me feel good.
3. Mean and sneaky beats mean and tough every damn day of the week.
4. Wrapped around every silver lining is a dark ass cloud.
5. Bad things happen to good people all the time. I prefer to be the bad thing, rather than the good person.

So, friends with that in mind, get on out to Pike's on Monday nights and come say Hello! You won't be sorry you did!!!
Remember, 8-Midnight, and have a Bud Light...

Rev Sin

Posted by CindyLu at 10:27 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

April 5, 2004

The Barflies.net Geek Party

This past Saturday evening a group of Barflies.net folk got together for dinner and a geek fest. Yep, after dinner we sat in the living room with four laptops, one pda, and two cell phones using all of the devices to surf the net for web sites & music we like.

Why did we do this? Changes are a coming your way here at barflies.net and we are making it a group effort ... Keep your eyes peeled for new features, new sections, and a new look.

P.S. I have changed the link colors here in the News Section (Blog) for improved screen readibility. Please use the comment form to let me know if you can see links better now. Thanks.

Posted by Ms. Jen at 1:43 AM | TrackBack

March 3, 2004

Best.BowlingMom.Ever.

The Barflies.net and Alex's Bar bowling teams met up last night to thank Ms. Jen for all of the hard work and dedication she selflessly puts into organizing our lazy butts and getting us to Vegas each year. We are constantly amazed by her patience and generosity! As a token of our appreciation, with the help of Tink, Wanda, and the folks at Java Lanes, Jen finally got that one last pin that she never seems to be able to knock down ;-)

Posted by Lucky at 12:34 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Best.BowlingMom.Ever.

The Barflies.net and Alex's Bar bowling teams met up last night to thank Ms. Jen for all of the hard work and dedication she selflessly puts into organizing our lazy butts and getting us to Vegas each year. We are constantly amazed by her patience and generosity! As a token of our appreciation, with the help of Tink, Wanda, and the folks at Java Lanes, Jen finally got that one last pin that she never seems to be able to knock down ;-)

Posted by Lucky at 12:34 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 9, 2004

Turning Japanese with Dan Dynotone

Every year, DJ Dan goes to Japan to visit friends and extended family. This year, I asked him to be our Barflies.net correspondent:

"Everybody always asks me what I do every time I visit Japan. This being my 5th visit, I decided to make an effort to write down as much as I could of the things I did when I was there this time.

Here are some of the highlights of this trip:

December 25th - Exchanging Christmas gifts with my Japanese friends. I never thought this would ever happen, completely blew my mind. Who says you can’t have Christmas in Japan?

December 26th - Ratholic at Gabi Gabi in Harajuku. Ratholic is an instrumental Surf band from Yokohama featuring all girls except for the guitar player. The girls wore matching dresses and we gave the guitar player a hard time for not having a matching dress. They played a mix of originals and covers. They had a perfect sound with keyboards, and saxophone to round it all out. This was an all night event and they went on at 12:30pm. The place was a small pub owned by the singer on the Japanese Rockabilly band The Rizlas. The Heineken on tap was good, but it cost 900 yen, which is about 9 dollars per glass! We didn’t stay for the other bands; we were told that they weren’t very good, so we left early. On the way home it snowed!

December 30th - “Garage Rockin Craze”, Shinjuku Loft. This was another all night event that started at 12am. We arrived at 12am and the first band Jet Boys started around 12:30. Jet Boys were a punk rock trio with a 40 year old singer/guitar player who gets completely naked when he performs. Thankfully they only played 4 songs. Then there was Taka who used to play keyboards for the surf band Jackie & the Cedrics. I had no idea he was a DJ as well as an excellent keyboard player. He did an amazing DJ set full of scratching his records, doing hand stands on top of his keyboards, and proceeded to light his keyboards on fire at the end of his set! Next were the 5,6,7,8’s, this show was to feature the original line up from the early 80’s. They just came out with a new CD of material from this line up, so they were only going to do a couple of shows to promote the CD. I was quite surprised when they hit the stage wearing 80’s clothing and whipped cream all over their faces. Their set was about 25 minutes long with them doing a very rocking version of the Go Go’s “We Got The Beat”. I love this band, check out their performance in Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie “Kill Bill Vol. 1. The best band of the evening was the Young Parisians. A Japanese glam band with every member of the band dressed up in glam garb. They looked absolutely fantastic, and they sounded great! I was a bit disappointed that they only played 7 songs, but ended with “All The Young Dudes”. After their set, we decided to leave at 4am. We wanted to see our friends Jackie and Enocky play, but they were scheduled to go around 6:30 and there were 3 other bands scheduled before their set. It was a great show even though we left a few hours early.

January 3 - This was my last day in Japan. I started the day by meeting my friends at Buddy’s store at 10:30 am. Our first stop was to do some shopping at Costco which is about an hours drive by car. We took 3 cars, and I got to ride in Enocky’s van with him and Jun. I can’t tell how weird it was listening to Buck Owens “Live in Japan” CD while riding in the car. We all took turns being the DJ in the car. Who would have guessed that Van Halen’s first album would be the hit of the day! Afterwards we went to a record store that was having a half off sale on used CD’s. We all walked out of there with a couple of CD’s each, and didn’t pay more than a 1,000 yen! Now it was time for dinner, and do my friends like to eat. We decided to go out for Korean BBQ were you can cook your food right on the table. While we ate were talking about music, and then we started asking what was the first concert we ever saw. The responses were seeing Miles Davis in a small auditorium, Ted Nugent at Budokan, and the Ramones at a kabuki theatre! Do you see why I keep coming back? It just gets better and better every time I visit.

Here is what an average day is like:

AM - Usually wake up between 5 and 7, depends on the jetlag. I could not get over it the whole time I was there during this visit. I’ll go for a walk around 8am. No stores or shops are open, only convenient stores. There are convenient store like 7-ll, AM-PM, Lawson, and others that are on every block! Around 9am I return home and have breakfast. Usually eat some fruit or bread from one of the local markets. Between 10am and 12pm I’ll either go shopping at the big department store located in the train station that is only a few blocks away or go to one of the local game centers and play video games. I got reacquainted Street Fighter Zero with characters I had never seen before. Once the local kids saw a gaijin (tourist) they would watch me play and give me tips on how to use the special moves. The younger kids know English better than the adults. I wish they had pinball machines in their arcades, but they don’t in the Kokubunji area.

PM - Most shops and small stores are open for business at 12pm. There are 4 small record stores nearby where I am staying. One record store is right next door! Since I can’t read kanji I have to literally go through everything. Most of the stores are categorized by Rock, Jazz, Blues, and Japanese Pops. You won’t find Bob Dylan under “D”, it’s under “B”. After awhile you catch on as to how they alphabetize. I’ll spend 2 or 3 hours easy looking at records and CD’s, afterwards I’ll go home and have lunch or eat out somewhere with the wife and mother-in-law. Maybe I’ll take a nap in the mid afternoon for a couple of hours or go to Rat Motor Beat. Rat Motor Beat is a vintage store my friends Buddy and Misuzu have in Kokubunji; it’s on the other side of the train station where I’m staying. It’s only a 5 minute walk to get there. While I’m there we will listen to music and talk in English and Japanese. Buddy plays in a band called Charlie & the Hot Wheels. They sound like the Ramones meet the Beach Boys. I saw them play last year and they really kick ass! He always takes me to shows and gets us on the guest list. He and his wife are the best tour guides ever! He’ll close his shop around 8pm and we’ll either go out to dinner or I’ll meet up with him later to go to a concert. If I go home for dinner, we’ll usually pick up something from a local shop and eat at home. It can be a lot cheaper this way. Not much to do after dinner except watch t.v.or listen to music. Watching t.v. with the sound off and playing Japanese sixties tunes is one of the things I like to do at home. The weather this trip was perfect, it didn’t rain at all the whole time there. Everyday was sunny and the temperatures were around 60 degrees!

Posted by DJWanda at 9:11 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 5, 2004

Welcome Frankie - Long Beach's Newest Resident!

A very warm welcome to Frankie Gardener who arrived on the scene this morning. Big congratulations to Kelli and Kimm Gardener on their brand new son!

Kimm emailed this evening:

Wanted to drop you all a mesage that Mom and Baby are doing well as I write.....

Francis Cash Gardener was born today at 8:02 am. He weighed 8 lbs 12 oz and is 21" long.

Kelli is doing great and we are lucky that Frankie is off to a great start....Mom plans to come home Wednesday, as she hopes to be up and on her feet tomorrow!

Thanks again for all of your good wishes,
Kimm

Liz Ortega sent this email to me late last night to post to the Barflies.net Blog:

"To Kimm and Kelli Gardener--
Thoughts and prayers to Kelli and Kimm Gardener who will be receiving their bundle of joy today. Best wishes to your new baby boy, Frankie! May Kelli have a speedy recovery because there's a drink waiting for her at the bar!

Cheers!
Liz Ortega

Posted by Ms. Jen at 10:03 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 11, 2003

In Loving Memory...

of Miss Norma Jean Avila

This week we lost our friend Norma Jean to a drunk driver. Miss Norma Jean was so full of life, so excited to be alive, that this is a terrible shock. Our condolences to her friends and family and all those that knew her. She will be missed.

A memorial to celebrate her life will be held at the Doll Hut Tuesday, November 11th, at 8:30 p.m. Please join us to remember Norma.

Posted by DJWanda at 10:40 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

November 8, 2003

Stripper Pooh

Betcha didn't know that Pooh Bear has a side career as a stripper in Long Beach...

Posted by Ms. Jen at 8:31 PM | TrackBack

October 26, 2003

Sausage Festival!

Ok, Ladies, I am paging all the Ladies... or Women... or Chicks... or Girls....

The last four or five times I have been to the Doll Hut it has been a Sausage Festival. Yep, men everywhere. At least 6 - 9 men to every woman. Punk rock night, rockabilly, surf, DJ night, psychobilly, whatever the music playing. Men everywhere. Punk rock boys, greaser boys, Butterheads, cholos, skins, even a few normal type males looking a bit out of place...

If you are single and female, the Doll Hut is the place to be. As Wanda likes to say, "The odds are good, but the goods are odd."

Posted by Ms. Jen at 12:32 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 22, 2003

The Odds are Good...

For all the single ladies out there... turns out California is the right place to be to meet men, since men outnumber women here in SoCal over any other place. It's like I always say... the odds are good but the goods are odd!

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 21 — Go West young woman, especially if you’re single and looking for love. And if you’re serious about seeking a male mate, go to Orange County or Silicon Valley — two areas with cities where, in an unusual twist, single men outnumber single women."

Read the full story.

Another excerpt:
"The other four California cities were immigrant magnets — Santa Ana, Salinas, Oxnard and Costa Mesa — which naturally attract male laborers, many of them single, foreign-born Hispanics."

Posted by DJWanda at 12:41 AM | TrackBack

September 12, 2003

Johnny Cash Died 9/12/03

"Cash once credited his mother, Carrie Rivers Cash, with encouraging him to pursue a singing career.

'My mother told me to keep on singing, and that kept me working through the cotton fields. She said God has his hand on you. You'll be singing for the world someday.' "

Thank God he did. Rest in peace, Johnny.

Posted by at 8:56 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 12, 2003

Talking is My Life!

"Joe Sib - 3 cell phones, 1 blackberry - Bring it on! Talking is my life!"

Posted by Ms. Jen at 10:52 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack