AB:NR - SOUTH BOSTON

Los Angeles, Dec 12 2010

3:15pm PST. Semi-accidentally ran a red at Franklin and Cahuenga, directly into a swarm of locusts. Massive undulating cloud straight out of Revelations, exoskeletons pinging off the Bronco like diabolical popcorn. Squeal of brakes, two women in a convertible screaming, hipsters bolting into the crepes place for cover, whole soundscape buzzing and whirring, including the phone jumping around on the dash: New York. Last minute complications with Cuba travel, shuffling shooting schedule, can I do Boston show in a couple weeks, instead. Not ideal, nothing is. Plowed through the swarm, pulled over and watched it. Thinking now, no idea why I assumed it would proceed north, away from me, but it did.

As of 11pm Google still turns up nothing on “Los Angeles locusts”, except Nathaniel West. Just one of those Things.

Burbank. 12.23.10

Rule number one, depart BUR \[Bob Hope airport, Burbank]. Two days before Christmas, got from the check-in business to sitting at the gate with ‘news’ papers and ass-flavored tea in a very civilized 9 min. Bob Hope Christmas special.

And here comes Bruce Jenner.

No other word for it—he just _collapsed_ into the plastic seat directly across. Looks like a microwaved action figure, and sort of is one, I suppose. Couldn’t be more obviously plasticized. Staring at the phone ringing in his hand, another phone started ringing in his bag. Right there is a man completely overrun by his situation. He might not be, in fact, _keeping up_ with his family. Nor should he, or anyone. Remember meeting him when I was 5, outside the Air & Space museum in DC, still blubbering-delirious after spraining my arm in the revolving door. He somehow produced a photo of himself heroic in Bionic Man tracksuit and autographed it while advising me to stay in school. Resisting the impulse to walk over there and tell him what I did instead. Phone still ringing in his bag, incessant. And the wind, cries, _Wheaties_…

12.28.10

NYC

See? This is what you get for being almost on time for the train. Five hours just plain rotting at Penn. Managed to secure a seat on the next Scamtrak out. Standard stranded passenger sprawl in the lounge which is nothing of the sort, rumor circulating that NE corridor is shutting down. There’s a new train passenger safety video looping on the TV monitor, twenty-plus viewings and I still can’t tell which of the featured Dahmeresque mouth-breathers is supposed to be the terrorist. “THERE ARE NO SUSPICIOUS PEOPLE ONLY SUSPICIOUS BEHAVIOR,” the voiceover repeats, over clips of someone’s idea of the Everyman: a Greenwich twat in a golf sweater who seems to be trying not to look like he just snorted the powdered bones of his paperboy. Mixed message, as usual.

Café car rolling out of the tunnel through the winter wonderland Bronx, trying to get the trailer for the Lemmy doc to play on the company-issue iPad. Voice from the ceiling says that Amtrak could be suspending service indefinitely. What else is new. Word came Denis Leary officially out, busy. Bill Burr?? Check w M.

12.29

Liberty Hotel, Boston MA

Headline “Snowmageddon” is everywhere. How the _fuck_ does that make sense? Because somebody thought “Carmageddon” was clever, though it makes not a goddamn lick of sense apart from rhyming, which this does _not_. Jesus. If there are editors none edit. Karmageddon, soon enough, one hopes.

True, though, the weather is remarkably bad. Out of the train into a taxi—the Bostonian species of taxi (the taxionomy), tobogganing through downtown, proper whiteout. By some route not merely unfamiliar but formerly impossible arrived at this hotel I’d never heard of, formerly the Charles Street Jail. Heard of that. As it happens, my grandfather also had an extended stay in this building, for one of those unfortunate misunderstandings with the authorities. Place cleaned up nice, incorporates set pieces from the old jail, cell block doors, bars in the bar, so forth. Though the coffee tastes like it might be a hold-over. Open plan around the rotunda, in this case not only like but actually Bentham’s panopticon design. His prison reform, intended to encourage self-rehabilitation, a more humane captivity, repurposed to fantastic effect by General Franco. But looks humane enough now, people flopping around on drinking couches down there. Stylish, as Boston goes.

Seems check-in confusion might have landed me in Tony’s room, but he’s still a week out and they’ve got another one of these, assume they’ll sort it. View out the front of the building through a huge Gothic window, geometric frame makes it impossible not to think of a Tie Fighter windshield.

TIEwindows

“I am yoah grandahtha.”

12.30

Location scout - Day 1

Woke to wind mercilessly pounding the spaceship windshield, snatched at the phone to stop its blaring, bleating. Concierge on it saying the rental car was delivered this morning and “Ready to go.” Not if it isn’t a Snow-Cat, it isn’t. Every few seconds another twister of snow and ice comes howling up the through atrium and whips off into a sky hardly distinguishable from earth.

And so it goes with the morning’s itinerary, which included the South Shore trip, Quincy, et al. Straight into Southie instead, on foot.

So then the near-empty T over to Southie and the heavy trudge down Broadway, snow devils twirling empty streets. Pieces of the place are familiar, kinda. There cannot have been as many tanning salons, in the _Irish _neighborhood. Who’s sinister plan is this? The one kind of cancer your average Celt had to retire to Florida to get. Is the tavern tan so out of fashion in Southie now? Then, it’s yet to be revealed precisely who and what is Southie since the real estate people bestowed “South End”-adjacent on it. Supposedly this newly revitalized so-called South End is no longer a zombie afterworld body dump—depending on your opinion of gleaming corporatized middle-management ghettos with on-site spin classes.

Remains true you can’t swing the entrails of a Yankee fan without hitting a roast beef sandwich place in Southie, but none of my loosely remembers suggestions exist anymore, or not the way they did. If they did. Diner name I couldn’t think of is Mul’s, still there, though not as interesting or visually appropriate as remembered. Place I expected to be the Teamsters’ bar was not that, and closed. Clear to me a few blocks into this slog that the only location necessary was one with warmth and whiskey. Diane \[producer\], in Zhivago-class outerwear, hat included, maintained criteria in line with producing a television program. Trudged around until it was too much, then more until Diane agreed we should hoof it back to the T.

Mezzanine furnished with drinking areas between the rooms. Useful.

\[Diane

It was as if Zhivagoʼs Roast Beef had never existed.]

Scout: Day 2

Morning rough, screwed for time, in a haze got out of the elevator on the wrong floor, stumbled into a sales convention breakfast. Work with it. Discussed e-marketing over passable crepe with unconcealed douchebag from Raynham, bailed at soonest opportunity or slightly thereafter and hightailed to DMV to get a driver’s license, Downtown Crossing branch, heretofore unknown. I was prepared this time, expecting the usual, which is: skepticism and suspicion at the service window as the computer spits out some alleged moving violation well past the edge of recall, holding a check for five times less than the dollar amount, before being effectively truncheoned by DMV goons and dragged off to the Commonwealth’s Pit of Confusion, followed by six months of court rigamarole Kafka couldn’t make up. It’s just the way it works, take a number, Josef.

Yet somehow I emerged from this newfangled, computerized, _magical_ DMV in less than 30 minutes, a free man with a valid MA license, for nothing more than the basic fee. Nothing remotely like this has ever happened. Ever. Relief. Joy. Fear. Panic. Acceptance. Still, having no particular reason to expect the other shoe to drop is no reason not to expect it will. We’ll see.

Rental car upgrade decidedly lateral. Heavier car, at least. Weather abated some, so scope the South Shore, figured we start with Quincy. In the car told Diane and Sally the GPS wouldn’t be necessary—wrong. There are new roads, and the old ones don’t go where they used to. Eventually found a way on to 93, pointed out the Chinese man. The drippy silhouette in the blue hippie-paint stripe on the Dorchester tanks, him I know. Spot him as soon as you’re tall enough to see out the window. Much later, you learn it’s Ho Chi Min, who is not Chinese, he’s from Vietnam, where a lot of kids’ fathers caught alcoholism. Depending whose father is driving you might be then made to understand that if you care to know any more than that about the mysterious East, go to college.

\[Blues dive], Quincy. Across from the defunct shipyard (good place to shoot something, doing donuts in the Roadrunner, maybe). As for the bar itself, if not for being the site of the first Unband gig it’s doubtful I’d ever have heard of it, or gone there if I had. En route Diane wanted confirmation it was “salty”, I said, don’t worry, it’s Quincy. Whatever that meant. Drive took forever, bar less salty than remembered. Not sure management believed the “tv show” gambit, or anything else, and there was Seattle crap on the stereo, loud. Walking out we all agreed it could be done, but probably better if it isn’t.

Tony wrote, reiterated chowder this side of the \[Bourne\] bridge. Bivalves on the bicep. Have to adjust expectations, this is as off-season as it gets. Still possible to wrangle something in Hingham, which remains the best way to set up the “lace curtain” motif. Lobster Pound closed through St Patty’s, might reopen for a day to shoot, but doesn’t sound likely. Shocked the place is still there, where every other pillar of my childhood has been bulldozed and replaced with condos, or some McMansion hellscape. Quick spin past the other potential locales in the vicinity, everywhere on my list was operated by prohibitively disinterested proprietors, gentrified beyond utility and/or Reason, closed for the season, or wiped off the map. Representing about the end of my role as a fixer.

So, on the table this eve, along with much cocktail detritus: 86 the South Shore. Even if something did turn out shootable, drive conditions make anything down there impractical under the circumstances. Fair enough. This does mean losing the primo _Eddie Coyle_ locales, but then everywhere is _Ice Station Zebra_ right now anyway. Also the Cape Verdean place it Dot is un-contactable, no phone, its seems. New Bedford already nixed, predictably. Really I was only saying New Bedford because Tony didn’t know about the Portuguese scene, and because when I say about the Victorian ‘hood and Moby Dick Day and the dope boats and \[a la Lower East Side 2nd Ave dive bar] Mars By-The-Sea and so forth, he thinks I’m bullshitting, which he ought to know by now, I am not.

The picture car goal remains the Roadrunner, the only appropriate model in the area is proving difficult to secure. ’65 Mustang in the mix now (too McQueen, I say). Tony advised expanding beyond 70s—Firebirds, Chargers, to anything American with serious horsepower. He agrees Buick or Caddy could be all right. Big trunks, for a body, mobile wet bar, etc. Latest email chain favorably mentioned a 1970’s pickup being available, but luckily this seems not to have been circulated to Tony. Called S to see if he still has his Trans Am. He does not, and nothing to replace it anytime soon, due catastrophic deewee, but he’s got calls out to some gearheads. Cautions anything vintage like that has certainly been off the road for months, advises that out first questions should be, how are the tires, and will it run in this cold. True.

Mink came by the hotel, usual mezzanine scene, reliably nightly and consistently improving as the hotel staff grows accustomed. Mink managed to extract from Sally that she plays in a band, called Geoff Leopard. Meaning they don’t have to rock, yet they do. We checked.

_Scout, Day 3_

GPS in the rental basically says, _Yah cahn’t get theyah frum heyah_, without the Down east accent. _In two hundred feet your destination will be on your right. _ True enough. Wave to it, swear at it, continue driving for six miles, u-turn, repeat… It’s running on pre-Big Dig software, obviously. And so aren’t I (sic). I simply no longer have any idea how to get anywhere in Boston except accidentally, and upon arrival whatever was supposed to be there is a Baby Gap, or worse. Attempt to cross Charlestown bridge, but it’s not there, replaced by some World’s Fair-looking span called Zakim (who?), which does not end at Zakimtown (or does it?), and somehow feeds back onto itself, as if through a wormhole. Ping-ponging over that for the fourth time Diane asked if I was actually from here, meaning Boston, and, later, after the second narrow escape in some vortex that used to be Roxbury, going the wrong way on a one-way which used to go the other way, she asked whether I’d at least been here. I’m sure she was half joking, the first time.

My answer can only be, No . I have _not_ been _here_. I left Boston before the digging got all that big, but I do remember the radio patter that as construction projects go the Big Dig was on par the Pyramids at Giza. Indeed, as it turned out, the true purpose remains a mystery, it’s been looted with abandon, and nobody knows how many bodies are buried underneath.

By luck, achieved Southie by car. Had a grinder at the grinder place. Grinders, plural. Guy kept bringing samples. Extreme eating part of the gig. Not easy. Murphy’s Law was closed unexpectedly, but Croke Park, neé Whitey’s, wasn’t. Dark as a tomb, gestural furnishings, plenty of menace to keep the riffraff out. Once past the obligatory vetting ritual, an utterly congenial place and drinks flowed. We scouted Whitey’s for some time, at the expense of other scheduled stops. Down the end of the bar Robert Mitchum’s stand-in was drinking himself to death. By the time we left, looked like he was almost there.

Dropping the South Shore means effectively the whole thing goes toward the Winter Hill / Whitey angle. Fine by me. However. There seems there might’ve been confusion regards the various souths of Massachusetts: south of Boston, South Shore, South End, South Boston, Southie… This dawned on me as I was confused by having to explain that I’m not “a Southie”. For one, Southie refers to a well-defined Boston neighborhood, not a person. I’ve never heard anyone use that to describe someone from South Boston, other than as a modifier preceding some noun unspeakable in polite company. Likewise, being from the South Shore, to someone from Southie I am an unspeakable noun between “lace curtain” and the first punch. This went some way toward explaining for Diane and Sally why my geography of South Boston is so weak, which I hadn’t realized needed explanation. I mean, the whole _Eddie Coyle _ thing is South Shore, plus Boston proper, Gov Center, where my father worked, the band was the ‘in’ for Fenway, and the Cambridge Coyle locations, etc. That’s how this whole thing came up in the first place. _Departed_ must’ve figured somewhere in the general Boston-crime film theme, though Tony and I didn’t talk about that.

Not that it matters all that much. I have spent time in Southie over the years, mostly for nefarious purposes. My experience there comprises whatever those trips add up to, plus a solid bar crawl or three over the years. I don’t know where the hell anything is, or street names, not really anyway. Mainly I know the one aspect of the neighborhood unlikely to have changed much, that is: you’re from there, or you are not. I think it’s now understood that not only am I not from Southie, I from the so-called Irish Riviera, and therefore might as well be walking around actually wearing a lace curtain, as a tutu. ‘Lace curtain’ remains primary among the sanctimonious shit less fortunate Irish people from Boston say about more fortunate Irish people from Boston, who are still less fortunate than Brahmin, who we’ll leave out of it. Could be a perfectly useful epithet, if reserved for the truly stuck up and flagrant douchebags. That it isn’t reflects Southie’s low self-opinion more than anything else, obviously. _You think you’re better than me? _ No. But for some reason you do. Not my problem, chief.

I don’t know, yet, how Southie’s rep these days compares historically, what with the touches of gentrification around, the lace-curtain-y abutments and all. In the early 80s, I was probably in 4th maybe 5th grade, elementary school chatter picked up that a bunch of demented circus clowns were cruising around in a white van abducting kids off the streets of South Boston. I asked my friend who had just moved from Southie—he the considerably better half of the synthesizer duo we formed to play school dances, and stadiums, eventually—if he knew anything about this. Sounded like bullshit to him. Reality is, anybody going around Southie in a clown suit for any reason, let alone interfering with children, would not be neither operating nor respirating, for long. Neighborhood watch has always been a motherfucker.

But with the exception of any actual attacks by roving circus clowns or similar, and Whitey Bulger & co’s freakish terrorizing, native violence in Southie is more or less in line with New England tradition. Insensate, sure, but not senseless. Even some of the archetypal, if indeed brutal, social practices are down at the root virtually indistinguishable from basic knight errantry. Galahad wouldn’t have suffered people talking smack or saying wrong things about his father’s employment history, either. Nobody of sound mind advocates stomping someone’s jaw against a curb, certainly not without proof of guilt—according to the sixth-grade grapevine this was the fate of a kid called, as it happens, Smiley—who as I recall just now was also from Weymouth. Just saying. ). But on the whole, rough as Southie can be, the collective operating philosophy comes down to: work hard and don’t act above your station. Which ought to be printed on our money, rather than what is. Any case, my experience a half-decent man who can hold his liquor finds himself in Southie is unlikely to encounter opposition a little deference and more drinking can’t solve. As the Orwell and [the band] Upper Crust advise, everybody’s equal, to a greater or lesser degree.

All this has been to say that far as I can tell what’s called for here, professionally, is to dig into the environs for some serious drinking. These aren’t tourist bars. When the shooting starts, so to speak, the idea of banging into any of these places with no personal connection, don’t know anyone from Adam nor Eve, and zero first-hand knowledge of the ecosystem or even where the can is, with lights, camera, strangers from New York, by any standard a forcible entry—as Edward Coyle would say, I don’t know as I like that. Fenway, Harvard Square, Allston, sure, but here it’d feel like bum-rushing someone’s house. Well-established, and obvious, Tony doesn’t have the option to consider this, or have a problem with it. That’s why there’s a fixer, which is me, to fix things, before they break. Eire-go, somebody’s gotta lace up his curtain and go out and get monstrously shitfaced in Southie. For as many nights as it takes. All of them, maybe. Probably.

Updated show notes some.

**OVERVIEW**

Tribal, working-class South Boston. Not known for cuisine. This will be about digging in with the locals. Hard.

**TONE**

Boston noir. As cinematic as possible; overt paean to Friends of Eddie Coyle. As Fellini to No Reservations: Rome, Peter Yates and Martin Scorcese to this one.

**SETTING**

Discordant Irish Catholic neighborhood of three-deckers and social clubs known for spawning famous politicians and famous criminals in equal measure.

**MUSIC**

- Original, a la Dave Grusin (_Friends of Eddie Coyle_, _Three Days of the Condor_); Morricone’s _Cittá Violenta_, Lalo Shifrin

- Classic Boston punk (e.g. The Bags, Nervous Eaters, The Freeze, Jerry’s Kids, The Flys, The Lyres) ; The Unband

- Townie anthems, e.g,. “Southie Is My Hometown”. On the nose but people still break into it spontaneously when they’re drunk.

SomeReservations_1

“scandalously reasonable”

Thurs. 12.29

Fade up on: Afternoon in a classic South Boston drinking hole, Murphy’s Law. Man and young boy seated at the bar.

_ See that machine over there, Bobby? Know what it is?_

_ It’s a jukebox. Like in the pictures you showed us. But it’s a funny kind. _

_ Good guess, but that’s not a jukebox. That’s a cigarette machine. _

_ Uncle Grandpa’s cigarette machine was in a hole in his neck that made him talk like a robot._

_ Yes, well, that kind over there came first. It is a relic of a lost civilization._

_ Like the Etruscans?_

_ Sure, like the Etruscans._

_ Why are you crying Uncle Tim? Are you sad?_

_ No, not sad, not sad at all. Drink your Guinness, there’s a good lad. _

_Day 4_

Woke in bathroom phone screaming got up too fast spun spranged face on thing which smashed. Reeled, overcorrected, broke everything not bolted to wall. Murphy’s Law: Everything that can be drunk will be.

Murphy’s Law is good, good people. Home base, no question. Some interim I was dragged out and introduced to yet another choice drinks establishment called Touchie’s. Austere. Unfettered utility. Triage liquor selection, mixers in industrial size jugs on black plastic storage shelves from someone’s garage, emergency food rations dangling on a toppling rack, some brand of potato chip unseen since the Curley administration. That doesn’t sound inviting to you, good, keep walking. Inside of a minute, ceased to notice how bad the lighting is. This is where you drink before work, and then after drinking at the place you drink after work. Didn’t say anything about anything to anybody anywhere about tv, of course, but have alerted team re Touchie’s needing to be looked at for the roster.

As for “fixing” the food, ie pre-producing the dining situations:

Caution is necessary when opening the door to the mini fridge in my room, to avoid exploding a precarious mass of mangled grinders, bent subs, oozing styrofoam soup buckets, fused balls of fishes and chips, misshapen lobster rolls, former pies, compacted dinner rolls, lumps of grease-bruised deli paper, and sandwich sacks of macerated whoknowswhat, all sort of mortared in with squashed cannolis and potato formations, plastic containers crammed in at all angles, like a flying saucer squad trapped by an avalanche, plus three cans of beer and a to-go cup stuffed with tripe held in the inner door shelf by mini bungees, like a primitive Claymore, effectively booby-trapping the whole thing. I have managed to eat everything that will not fit, with the exception of a side of broccoli boiled to the New England traditional grayish wad, disposed of in the hall outside the door, with prejudice. I am systematically working through the rest, with much difficulty.

There’s just no way. The major part of scouting, food sampling, can’t be left to chance when cameras roll, I figured there’d be eating required. Whatever that means in Andalusia or Nice or Hanoi, here it means consuming various undifferentiated gut bombs, and like Chaplin strapped to the force-feeding machine in _Modern Times_. Can’t complain, remembering back in the Northampton era, vaulting the porch railing and chasing after a rabbit, a la _Altered States_, desperately, weakly, pounding at an industrial tin of preserved hooves from the Survival Center with a hammer and screwdriver, so on. Whether a camera adds its supposed ten pounds, I can feel my arteries hardening, and I’ve been slipping in and out of some kind of lunchmeat-induced k-hole, and there are _sounds_. From me. Lower me. Disturbing, inhuman sounds. These are exacerbated by my efforts to roll myself over to the phone to see about room service bringing roughage, just chuck some fucking lettuces through the door like a zookeeper, crawl and nibble like an ancient tortoise.

Staggered to the designated lounge area, earlier, and was on about the dining situation to Sally and Diane. Sally glares like I’m a complete idiot (if she observes me in some other mode, I have not seen it). She says, “Ruffino—_just have a couple bites_. You don’t have to finish everything on your plate, that’s ridiculous.”

I told her, Of course I’m going to finish everything. I wasn’t raised by _wolves_.

“Then stop eating like one,” she says.

As usual she has a point but as always I am who I am. And I hit capacity days ago. So I announced I will be taking an extreme measures. Beginning tomorrow I’ll be seeing Diane and Sally in the hotel gym in the mornings. After their peals of laughter subsided, I bet them ten dollars each that I’d be on the treadmill by the time they got there. That will be twenty dollars toward what I owe \[Murphy’s Law bartender\] Scott for the tab I’m almost positive I spaced paying last night.

12.30.10

Woke late, fucked. ATM at CVS was broken, had to walk waythehell down Charles to get cash for Sally & Diane. And Scott.

Checked out diner:

Galley Diner, aka Rumpy’s Roast Beef, is down in the no-man’s-land just off the causeway, in a derelict shack across from the container terminal. Essentially a galley kitchen with a few tables; inundated with memorabilia, tacked-up notices: local obits, memorials, causes, plus requisite posted consequences for irritating the chef, complaining, etc., and maxims commercially produced or handprinted, regarding manhood, relationships, personal economy, and not trusting people who don’t drink, among others. Food’s fresh (minimal storage), everything made to order from scratch, most often involving huge blocks of meat pulled from the groaning taupe Frigidaire in the dining area. Kolleen, exceptional server, has the place spruced up right now, cartoon Santa tablecloths, light-up Christmas village, so forth. Corned beef hash is beautiful, steak & cheese is made with actual sliced steak and reputable cheese, “Southie omelet” feeds a family of four. Breakfast & lunch only. Owner-operator Paul is a good egg, friendly (fan of No Res.), took the place over from his father, Bill, who according to Paul has gotten too ornery for even a Southie dive. Though Bill was around, seems like a nice guy. Paul qualified that Bill only loses his shit on people when he’s in the weeds, and gets “flooded”, as in mentally overwhelmed. Paul has been the official owner “Since before Whitey went on the lam, so...’94 I guess,” he says.

Not the only man in Southie who measures time like this. Touchie’s and The Quencher use the Bulgerian calendar almost exclusively. New Year’s decor is 1,995 years off, depending which Whitey life event you count from.

Also looked in at Stab n Kill \[Savin Hill\] Yacht club. Rum and cokes with exactly the people you want to have those with. Hard yes on this place, shoot Sat or Sun, ideally.

As hoped, and more or less expected, Tony has nixed the proposed polar bear club scene. Among other good reasons, required shooting on New Year’s Day. As much as I strive to avoid my comfort zones, I could hardly be more pleased with the deletion from the show itinerary: _Mike will swim in Boston Harbor while Tony stays warm with spiked hot chocolate._ Who came up with that, I don’t wonder. Plunge would have made short work of a hangover, but so does vodka, Pedialyte, and a couple Percocet, thanks very much. Everybody’s splitting for the holiday, have decided to remain here, in for penny & pound on Southie New Year. Told the committee aka Sally & Diane, I’d document goings on somehow, maybe DSLR if Mink has one he can spare, otherwise shoot on phone, whatever.

So. Calendar wide the hell open until next year.

Hit Touchie’s early. Light crowd, Touchie had the racing simulcast on, Touchie in characteristically tentative good spirits. Every hour is happy hour at Touchie’s, really. Wandered over L-Street, few pops, then one normal drink then twothreefourfive goddamn Minderasers and some other collegiate toxoid that was on fire (maybe accidentally) at the Quencher, which is how it goes there, though that’s not why it’s one of the best bars on the planet (this late, _crucial_ add to the shooting schedule). Accepted invite from one of the local extreme drinking teams and relocated to someplace we were or might as well have been served by means of a funnel, then Eire, where a cat reclined on a stereo component and mumbled things I kept demanding he come over and say to my face, until I was pulled out of there by different, blurrier, people. Later I slipped on a stoop and thereby entered a three-decker backwards, where there were shots of something—always with the shots, brutal—and people were jumping, or there was some equally visible instability, before the test pattern hit me, during which time I made my way back to the hotel, evidently.

In the “con” column of drinking in Southie, the mornings are not good. Haven’t had hangovers like this since recognizing the problem was not the whiskey but the sour—the hangover problem, I mean, not the arrests and things, the problem there is cops. Everything improved after deciding if it’s brown put it down, if it’s clear put it here *indicate mouth*. This is Boston—I knew full well there’d be vile _liqueurs_ nevertheless inappropriate to refuse, but the reality is, random unthinkable cordials are flying around nonstop, like shrapnel, totally unmanageable. Switched to whiskey, as the most likely shot to come sliding down the bar is Jameson’s. All you can do, really, besides disappear to the can or to make a call outside the instant anyone calls a ‘social’ and the bartender is emptying the Goldschläger or worse over a full rack of shot glasses. Nobody seems to know what this McGillicuddy is a doctor of. Seems to be the opposite of one.

Almost everything else about drinking in Southie goes in the “pro” column. Notably, none of the jukeboxes, sound systems, or passing vehicles, since I’ve been here anyway, have emitted a single note of the false-emoting “Indie” weak-rock garbage ubiquitous everywhere else, and, with all the Van Morrison, I’ve heard Brown Eyed Girl only _once_, and it must be recognized that the way the woman in Southie shouted the lyrics made it impossible to mind. There you go, thank you, Southie.

SouthieJukebox

Southie jukebox.

12.31.10

Night off. Purged room fridge, any viable contents distributed between the polite chap outside 7-11 and the gentleman residing in the ATM kiosk, who wound up with the lobster tail meat, luck of the draw. Back to this small grocery down Charles. Was skeptical hearing that the owner has a deal with a game preserve to supply him with high-end stuff, but now having the heard from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, seems legit, and overall altruistic enough in any case. All kinds of sliced beasts in there (cooking high end exotic flesh over a rusty barrel under the expressway while chugging Night Train—a scene?) Bought prepared lion, baguette, then a couple bottles of wine off the wine “shoppe” on the corner from a kid with a tattoos all over his face and a lip disk like an Ethiopian tribesman who knows his Pouilly-fuissés.

Rockin’ NYEve downstairs, sounds like.

Music notes - TFoEC\[ \The Friends of Eddie Coyle\] soundtrack. Grusin. Get into the jazz-prog thing, in G sharp-flat min9major dimSum, clashing strings/mellotrons, always percussion too loud, triangle everywhere—certainly bad for dialog but VO probably ok…maybe. Main theme is especially good, and out there, in an era where dissonance was understood. Also \[_Three Days of the_] _Condor_ , less dissonant, to say least. Redford discovering a gruesome massacre at headquarters you could use for a cocktail scene with Faye Dunaway. Tony mentioned _Death Wish_—took me a sec , face went numb just thinking about the Jimmy Page coke “songtrack” for _II_, but no, the original, Herbie Hancock. Via Charles Bronson in _Citta Violenta_ arrived, naturally, at Morricone. Homage to the twisted suite from that (overture?) for the faux-show intro. As for the synth hook from _Ironsides_, turns out, after all these years, it’s called _Ironside_, and had nothing to do with Boston, it was a San Francisco show. I only remembered the opening credits, the bullet putting Raymond Burr in a wheelchair, and had somehow conflated with the _U.S.S. Constitution_. San Francisco does seem a more thrilling locale to be in a wheelchair. Overall need to go deep with 70’s crime films, as opposed to cop shows. But then, as it’s famously said, Cops and criminals—when you’re facing a loaded Clavinet, what’s the difference.

1.1.11

L-Street Bath House, M Street Beach, 8 a.m.

New Year’s Polar Plunge

Three guys in penguin costumes walk into Dorchester Bay. First penguin screams, Aaawwhrrhh! My fahkin’ nuts! Crrist on a crrruuttch! Second penguin just screams.

(See video).

Day 1

Crew arrived. When Tony said he was driving up he meant he was driving himself, in his own car. Significant development. Freedom to tear out of the city at any time to anywhere is important. Also, he says, who did I think was going to be driving the camera car? I said, too-fuckin-shay, I have a brand new Mass license, and he says, “A real one or one from a guy around back?” There was that operation behind the movie theater I was managing some years ago: walked out back to have a smoke and there’s a kid holding a 10X Mass license in front of him, like a stand-in cutout, his face in the photo square, the recently hired fifteen-year-old usher with a camera on a tripod. His finished product was flawless, no surprise he was making a small fortune. Had to stop, of course. Eventually. You don’t want to discourage that sort of ingenuity, throw the baby out with the bath water. But as I thought I had made sufficiently clear, I had nothing to do with.

Decent dinner downstairs hotel, retired to lobby bar. Hitting real stride when Tony taps out, the usual have to be pretty for the camera excuse, only this time it’s my problem as well. Villainous grin he says, “I look forward with great pleasure to watching you feel my pain.” Already do.

Day 2

On a balcony in Los Angeles some months ago, among many lofty ideas for the episode we discussed: credit sequence, vignettes/interludes, possibly with loosely scripted dialogue, emulating film grain, particular screen wipes, so forth, all of which will live or die by degrees, or decrees, in post. We also agreed to attire ourselves akin to crime cinema of the 1970s, and a passing third party concerned with fashion asked how that would be any different than what we were both wearing. Rhetorically, and a little snide, we thought. Evoking démodé delinquent stereotypes would not require significant adjustments to either of our appearances, was the joke. True enough. Naturally, I had to take it further, so on the way out hit a Hollywood thrift shop that looked like a ransacked _Starsky & Hutch_ wardrobe truck and picked up basically a pretend coat, which I was wearing this morning when went out to meet the transport van this morning, practically hypothermic in seconds. Tony there in _winter_ leather, at least, and we’re off to the first location, for the intended intro/credit sequence, walking and trying not to look awkward for this, in Government Center, unfortunately. Memory of crossing that concrete expanse toward my father’s office as a kid, my snowsuit useless against the wind machine, the vague thought then that there had be intent behind the wind, malignancy personified. No reason not to believe it now, at fuck o’clock in the morning being blown sideways and lacerated through vintage _bullshit_ that would be useless against a light breeze. Tony: having fun yet? Yes and no. Everyone in the crew, 30 yards off, shouted directions barely audible, every ass over there freezing off too—except this Zamboni, going about his business unaffected, in strange coveralls. What’s he wearing? Some kind of super-soldier drysuit?

Tony: What’d I tell you. Zamboni. Trust me, you have no idea. Getting the idea.

Set up, though minimal, not instantaneous, wind picking up. Pain, _knives_. Dunky’s over there, I said. Nothing built in New England after nineteen-sixty would exist without Dunkin’ Donuts. Let’s shoot in there. Nice try, Tony says, but then somebody was running back to the van and the crew was moving, resetting, and a sustained gust was positively psychotic, and we went to Dunkin Donuts and drank coffee until it was time.

ZamboniTruck (1)

Zamboni

Chump Line

This life is hard, but it’s harder if you’re stupid.

Even without the 1970s noir conceit, goes without saying the imperative here is to avoid anything resembling a Boston foodie-acknowledged establishment. Certainly no Quincy Market, or what’s it called—Durgin Park, if that’s still there, none of that, and no pedigreed chef sort of joints, no tablecloths. Basically, no place not easily affordable for Eddie Coyle, or as it happens, me. (Yet another occasion to lament the loss of the Tasty \[Diner, Harvard Square\]. Tony anticipates web-wide outrage, says this as we strap in to the lobby bar after the shoot. Not crowded, not dead. Says, he gets unbelievable amounts of shit, all the time. Unknown to me because it’s an internet thing. Seems one tribe of _foodies_ can be relied on to reproach him for not ingesting a prolapsed pig anus on the veldt or subjecting himself to similar for their amusement, another equally vigilant group, he predicts, will be all over him for the perceived snub of the city’s fine dining establishments, claimed to be every bit as good as New York’s, by people who haven’t properly been there, and yet another fusillade can be expected from On High for failing to recognize those beloved institutions that have without fail been recognized _ad nauseam_, viewable on the sort of airplane setback fare that makes anyone with taste consider yanking the emergency door mid-flight, and still more, the miscellaneous self-appointed culinary experts will mount personal attacks because they simply cannot _believe_ not only did he not go to blah blah’s but went to fuck-fuck’s instead, and so on.

Again, the scope of our discussion was the Higgins book, the Yates film, Winter Hill and Whitey, dope, guns, and as usual _poliziotteschi_, Morricone, Shifrin, etcetera. Eating was absolutely not factored in until very recently, and other than the aforementioned parameters, Tony had very little to do with it beyond, “If possible some clam chowder, before the bridge”. Correct?

“Correct.”

I said, so what the fuck do they want, these people.

“I didn’t say I give a shit, I’m just saying that’s what’s going to happen.”

Drinking to that when, from down the end, day trader attire, wasted, here comes this guy. He’d been clocked immediately, identified by Tony as Dexter—_a_ Dexter, of many—and his movements had not gone unobserved. Dexter was taking a break from saying weird shit to women to point at Tony going, you’re that guy.

“No, I’m not. Definitely not.”

“No no no yes you are. You’re, ah…ah…”

After far too long Tony says, “Emeril,” and yet again, it works.

“That’s it! I fuckin knew it! Fuckin knew it!”

Tries to get his buddies to follow him over, one gives him the finger. Buys us a round. Having answered his inquiries regards the production he advises us in strongest possible terms to avoid Southie, do not go to Southie, repeats this several times, followed by his disordered reasoning for that, and its recapitulation, then, swaying heavily, he just as strongly and repetitively recommends, “Kwinzee fahkin mahket, Fanny-lil haul…” Who knows how many times, I don’t think he realized we’d left.

Day 3

Howie Carr thing has provided some insight to this aggro NoRes viewership online, already fired up. Apart from Howie Carr’s journalistic and subsequently personal connection with the Bulger story, since I moved to Los Angeles, his show is to my cortex as, say, mindfulness meditation is to Malibuans. Salt of Massachusetts calling in to mouth off. _Howee I jus wanna say about yoosin state money to do relocate the woodland fairies oah whatevah, these people ah drinking hayahspray like Kitty Dookakis, facrissakes Howie we gotta send ‘em back to Califowahnya._ Whether I consider certain views often expressed on his program to be ill-considered, anybody doesn’t already get why a Bostonian ex-pat in California might crave this, I can’t help. And given the audience and the subject matter Tony wants to address, no question, the right show.

Up in the WRKO offices, Howie was naturally enthused meeting Tony, but appeared dubious when I told him I was a fan of his, meanwhile looking like Anthony Bourdain’s personal Quaalude dealer. Though unaware, I think, that I was on something not completely out of that department, as a precaution against nerves, and cold. I had it on good authority these pills were not drugs, per se. They are called beta blockers. Block everything alpha to zeta, far as I can tell. Remainder of day floating mutely through whatever we did. I thought I talked too much during the Howie bit, until afterwards Tony asked why I hadn’t said anything.

Tony went up to the room to do his shit, I checked in at lobby bar. Word fully circulated in Southie now that there’s a tv show out and about in the neighborhood, and for obvious reasons we’re not exactly inconspicuous around the hotel, though I’m not sure how the guy suddenly in the seat next to me knew as much as he did. Gave me his unsolicited opinion about Anthony Bourdain on the Howie Carr show. Nothing to do with the content, deigning to appear on a “conservative” radio show. Told him Howie Carr was my doing, not Tony’s, from which my neighbor drew erroneous conclusions about my cosmogony, and more or less accused me of trying to lead Tony into some sort of right-wing ideological trap. Managed to half-convince him that was nonsense, and engaged him on the principal on-air topic, this tyranny of fast-food and the predominantly self-destructive eating habits in this country, stuffing children with garbage tantamount to criminal neglect (Tony more fervent about this since Ariane), the strains put on the already fucked health care system by all this, and (hadn’t thought of this one until Tony got on about it) the _bone fide_ national security risk , exemplified by the folly of perpetuating a lumbering, BigMac-fueled American soldier, and compared to other armed forces, that’s not entirely hyperbole. Hamburger Hill, indeed. Also, I said—because it was easy to see where this guy was going—given Michelle Obama’s affiliation with this sort of nutritional re-think, with her urban gardens and a very long overdue expose on the school lunch, one can safely assume NPR and similarly-oriented outlets have explored this area and will continue to do so, and far as I know _Car Talk_ doesn’t do guests. _Whereas_, I said, maybe possibly a little aggro myself, Howie Carr’s audience, whatever you assume about it, politically or whatever, has likely _not_ been exposed to this particular, very valuable, line of thinking in any way that would encourage genuine examination, and might be less likely to lump it as liberal claptrap if it’s presented by an acknowledged non-bullshit personage such as Tony. Nobody who actually gives a shit wastes time preaching to the fucking choir. Guy says, well, Tony going on Howie’s show “sends the wrong message”. Right. Okay. Never mind, drop it. To avoid any controversy whatsoever I said, yeah, well anyway, the gist of the episode is such and such and since Howie Carr is encyclopedic on Boston crime, the Bulgers in particular—bullshit, no he isn’t, this guy says. I said, have you read his latest book, he said what book, I said the one about the Bulger brothers, he snorted and said, _of course_ he hadn’t, then resumed informing me that Southie was in no way representative of Boston’s best food, and advised the show include Faneuil Hall, and, Legal \[Seafood], “at least”. Starting to see what Tony means, about the troll people.

Day 4

Unscheduled rendezvous at CVS. Weather clement. Bright, warm. (Sun streaming through the window in the room like the Rapture). Crew getting supplies inside, Tony outside smoking. Effusing on home life, his frightening proximity to actual Happiness actually frightening, as it can be. Most important, at all costs: he quit smoking when he said he did and hasn’t had one since. Very, very, firm about this, when I meet her I’ll understand. Sardinian. Capisco. Crew emerge with sacs of victuals, Zach and Todd are flush with condoms and Astro-glide. For the cameras, they explained. Protruding parts need protection, lenses need lubrication. Spotting rain clouds, Todd ran back in for dental dams.

Driving.

South Boston Candlepin. I assumed I could still bowl a 180. Minimum.

I cannot.

In fact, candlepin far more difficult than remembered, even after achieving what felt like optimum bowling buzz, I was all dead wood, gutter, Quarter-Worcester. Knowing Worcester you’d think that’s better than a Full Worcester, but no. Counterintuitive that way. We got our asses handed to us. Not, I was sorry to learn just beforehand, as badly as \[host of 70’s-80’s local TV staple _Candlepins for Cash\__] Bob Gamere did, or will. Stabbed like fifty times in the Fens a few years back, I knew, but he just got popped for child porn. How the mighty have fallen.

ToddBowl

“You want me to rub that on your lens for you?”

Beat Me Up, Buttercup

Somewhere in Southie, after hours.

Few sounds if any are more thrilling than that of the front door a bar being locked while you are still comfortably inside. Typically it’s audible, or you’re at least aware of it, because another pretense of legally closing for the night is that the bar has been cleared of most of the patrons, who have taken the din with them to be dispersed in the street. The whole place continuing more or less uninterrupted into the lock-in, your only clue to the proverbial shift change is that inescapable sense of being deep in the wee hours that draws your attention to a clock, an attempt to open the door, or, as last night, the sudden, telltale suck of air from a room that’s suddenly gone to DEFCON 1 at 3 a.m.

Didn’t see what set sparked it. Vague awareness of shouting, poof went the vibe, and the music shut off. The female contingent of the bar divided, like a practiced drill team, into roughly equal opposing units, and commenced a mutual verbal assault unimaginable by men, or I think, women not from Southie. They might as well have been slicing each other up with broken bottles. The bartender had the front door open in seconds flat and the offended parties, again orderly, filed out into the street, everyone else following, and the melee resumed, the front door locking behind. No one but the combatants was sticking around, nothing anybody could do without making things worse. An Acura comes screeching around the corner and jumps the curb, way over capacity with enraged local women, one I recognized leapt out while the car was still moving, wielding a Sox mini-bat. Makes you think twice about bat day at Fenway.

January - Day.

Guinness. Guinness, Jamesons. Guinness, Jamesons. Jamesons, Jamesons, Powers. Powers. Bud Light, Bud Light, Dr. McGillicuddy’s. Dr. McGillicuddy’s, Dr. McGillicuddy’s. Bud Light. Powers. Cuervo. Cuervo Silver. Dr. McGillicuddy’s, Irish car bomb, Jaeger, Jaeger…Goldshlager? Glass of water? No, car bomb. Guinness, Kamakaze, Bud Light. Jesus.

And onto Bar #2. Then #3.

“It Goes Where You Point It”

Given the somewhat reckless approach, the whole thing has been threatening to go weird on us from the top, and if it had already I didn’t notice until we got to the Quencher. A chunk of ice hit me in the side of the head, hard, followed by a clicking sound, followed by another iceball, slamming into Tony’s chest. In the shadows, twelve o’clock, a very small being with only eyes peeking out from a snowsuit, aiming a plastic tactical weapon at us. Pee wee black-op. A homemade shield hung on his arm. Iceball, iceball, iceball. Semi-automatic fire– his personal modification to his weapon, no doubt. Being phantasmagorically wasted and so processing events in no particular order, I consulted my watch (empty wrist) and thought, he’s out late for a schoolni—bang! iceball to the groin.

Going around the village, the kampong, earlier, for coffee, etc. Outside a spa on Broadway this afternoon the iceball kid was eating a sandwich on the stoop, in his civvies. It was him all right. All the Dr. McGillicuddy’s in Southie I won’t forget those eyes. Guy passes him on the sidewalk, nods hello, but the kid just chews his sandwich, thousand yard stare. The guy shakes his head. “Hiya doin, Jimmy— you sick fuck.”