A few days ago I got on the stage of a Phoenix bar, Gypsy’s Roadhouse, to perform seven minutes of poetry, at the request of, and in celebration of the birthday of, my friend Russ K. I was happy to be there, and honored by the request, but the superb performers who had preceded me could not get a rise out of the audience. And I did worse than they did.  The ONE time I got the faintest rise out of this tough crowd was an ad lib. I was in the middle of a set of words about cats, in one of my series of “CATastrophic Cat Acrostics,” and I came to the word “Anhedonia,” and I stopped. Looked at the crowd. “Raise your hand if you know what Anhedonia is.” No one raised a hand. “It is the Inability to Experience Pleasure.” Waited a beat. “You know, kind of like what you guys are going through now.” And I got a micro-laugh.

Other than that, it was zilch, zip, zero, and I psychically limped off the stage, yielding it to the next victim. Some nights are going to be like that, if you dare to take a stage.

But it was a valuable experience, humbling and character-building.  And it inspired this page. Please note that the things I have people say in my cartoon above did not happen at Gypsy’s Roadhouse that night. But I have heard the equivalent of every single one of them in my four-decade experience in bars, grilles, nightclubs, and lounges. Bar ladies DO get hit on rudely. People DO verbally abuse family members over the phone. Other people talk incessantly during a person’s act; so on so forth.

And some bars are magnets for extreme behavior. One of my favorites, not too far from my apartment, has been known to have crime-scene tape around it more than once.

TOUGH Crowd

They eschew the esoteric
Ostracize the sweater wearer
Upsy-daisied Jericho
Goes the Confidence, laid low
Having thus been woh’d, whoaed, woed