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Video Crack A guy walks into a bar. Me. I'm the one walking in. Why? Because I want a beer. Why the hell else would I walk into a bar? But these days, what seems self-explanatory doesn't always make sense. It's a local place - dark, lots of oak, good food, a couple old Polish guys taking a nap on the bar. There's a good crowd tonight, ranging from baggy-pants nineteen year olds to polyester-pants sixty year olds. There's usually a friendly vibe in the place, something that just makes you feel like you're welcome. But tonight is different. Something's ... creepy, like I'm looking at a freeze frame from "Night of the Living Dead." Everyone's got a spectral thousand-yard stare going on, mouths open, eyes unblinking and glossed over. They're all fixed on something over the horizon, like a big saucer in the sky is going to open its bottom hatch and suck them up. But the only horizon I see is a good buzz and maybe some chicken wings, so I figure I'll ignore them and get that beer I've been waiting all day for. The only problem is the bartender - he's running around like madman and the cash register sounds like an old fire alarm, but I don't see him pouring any drinks. I lean over the bar holding a twenty, but he's so busy he doesn't even notice me. As my throat begins to dry up and crack in anticipation of that beer, I look around to see what all these weirdos are hypnotized by. The mother ship is a television mounted high up on the wall. On the screen, colored balls are dropping onto a grid of numbers one at a time. Then it hits me. It's Quick Draw. I look around the room and all the zombies are drooling on little printouts, waiting for the balls to drop onto their numbers so they can buy more tickets. Now, TV I understand. There's nothing like watching hockey in a bar while slugging Canadian beer and gorging yourself on chicken wings. But there's no way I could sit like a moron all night, staring at white numbers on a black screen, waiting for something to happen. Okay, that's great, maybe you can win some money and spend it all on drinks for everyone around you at the bar. But what the hell good is the money if you can't enjoy your liquor? By the time I finally get my beer, I know I have to get away. It feels like all these Quick Draw junkies are staring at me, but they're looking past me up at the screen - "NEXT DRAWING: 1:39"- and watching the time tick down to the next game, looking like they're in line for the bathroom at Keith Richards' seventy-fifth birthday party. There's one beautifully empty table left in the corner, one haven from this mass-hypnosis money machine, and I head right for it. But when I get there, there are no stools. I set my beer down on the table and scan the area. I spot the stools, squeezed in at the end of the bar, taken up by a couple Metallica kids drooling all over a TV unit on the bar about three inches in front of their faces. I move closer, trying to come up with a plan to knock them unconscious and take the seats, and then I see what they're doing. They're playing a Concentration-type game, using the wonderful touch screen technology to flip the squares, but the pictures are assorted body parts of plastic-breasted Hollywood whorebags. There are two full glasses of piss-warm beer and a pile of quarters next to the machine. I'm not in a bar, I'm in a crackhouse - a video crackhouse. People don't use alcohol to escape their problems anymore. Those were the good old days when you could get hammered and ramble all night to the guy next to you, knowing that he really didn't give a crap but he'd sit there and listen. Now people come here to put themselves on autopilot and forget about each other for a few hours, as they slowly get fat and die. Alcohol just happens to be served on the premises. Forget trying to have a conversation with anyone - I may as well buy a twelve pack, sit on my own couch, and put the TV on. At least the beer would be cheaper. I leave the bar and head off for a walk, to try and figure out what the hell happened to that bar. Nobody notices me leave. -Jay |
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