Decade's End Party: New Year's Eve at Saints & Sinners. FUCK THE CALENDAR, WE'RE OUT

2009 WAS WEIRD. A vaguely black guy became president. I turned 30. Michael Jackson croaked. I got a steady girlfriend. The world economy collapsed. I became an extremely minor Youtube celebrity. My friend Pudge got stabbed while deejaying. Saints & Sinners management opened a bar a block away from... Saints & Sinners. Sum and a bunch of my friends dubbed themselves The Milky Way and started running around town in wigs and facepaint. And my parents are flirting with each other after 15 years of divorce. Mama said there'd be days like this. I just didn't expect her to be sitting on my father's lap when they came.

I don't want to get too deep into my feelings on the decade. It's gonna be a few more years before we get enough distance from it to really understand what a satchel of turd it was. But for now, consider:

• N'Sync broke an album sales record that many say will probably never be topped.
• And the buck-toothed guy from Mad Magazine stole the presidency for eight years.

For now, that's all I got. And really, that's all I need.

Gregorian calendar rules dictate that decades begin on the 1, not the 0. Fuck a Gregory. That's a gay ass name and this was a ridiculous ten years. The new decade begins Thursday night at Saints & Sinners. Entry is free. Midnight champagne is free. I'm on the tables all night. Everyone who shows up to Saints that night will spend 2010 basking in the radiance of a new beginning. Everyone who doesn't will have condemned themselves to another 365 days under the shitcloud listening to Kelly Clarkson and trying to figure out in what part of town you're least likely to get the shit smacked out of you for wearing a kufi (hint: stay north of Hyperion). See you next decade, bitches. Well, 126 of you anyway. Don't need the fire department coming up in the bar. Especially with the fireballs and all.

SMOKEY ROBINSON, "THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY" [songaday]

"Agony" can be found on many of those oldies compilation CDs covered with drawings of lowriders, crying clowns, Latinas in Jessica Rabbit dresses and various other images you may find across the average Mexican Mafia member's chest. Mildly acclaimed LA rapper Defari's nod on '98's "Keep It On The Rise" ("I like the oldies / like 'Agony & Ecstasy' by Smokey") is 90% of the reason I half care about him. I forget the circumstances under which this song got lodged in me, but I recall a crisp winter and whisky in the morning. It's about accepting a fucked-up situation, it's an affirmation of an immutable law of love, and it always seems to come on just when you're dancing with someone you have no business dancing with and that's how you know you're getting older.

Wikipedia: Smokey Robinson

IF YOU DRIVE A MUSTANG, I PROBABLY HATE YOU.

Now don't you feel stupid.

IT WAS THE EARLY- TO MID-NINETIES WHEN INSECURE PRICKS OF AMERICA WERE AT LONG LAST INTRODUCED TO THEIR CHARIOT. American-built, with none of the rice-in-the-tank feminism of the Japanese fin rides, and all of the little-dick stench. In the greater Los Angeles area that William "oops where'd my cigar go" Clinton presided over, the sleek curves and insistent growl of a then-new Ford Mustang were the last two details to wash over one's senses before some extra-short son of a successful attorney would jump out of the driver's side and start yelling at someone while vaunting himself chest out around the perimeter, MC Eiht foreshadowing the bloody beatdown from stock Kenwoods, and a phalanx of his bandana'ed up "friends" itching to trampoline on some poor kid's corpse in the name of their current sponsor.

But that's not why I hate Mustang owners. I was never that kid, and besides, who doesn't enjoy witnessing a horribly mismatched ass-whipping every now and again. I hate them because they drive like suicide bombers on their way to a Holocaust museum. We've all been there. You're driving down the freeway, playing the game. You have a bowl of chili waiting for you at home and you just want to live. Cars in your rear view mirrors look steady. Then out of nowhere, Bruce fucking Wayne roars an asshair past you as he weaves through the minute gaps between an eighteen-wheeler, a Prelude and your car to cross four lanes at once. They do all this, of course, under the assumption that nobody else on the road hates their life half as much as they do, and therefore won't make any sudden moves that, when paired with their sudden moves, would mean at least two people less who won't have to wonder about whether the new healthcare plan will actually have a public option or not. But all someone has to do at the moment Lil' Napoleon slaloms past is reach for their coffee, or look at their phone, or pick their nose, or - God forbid - forget for even a second that the roads are full of idiot Mustang drivers, and it's gonna be three hours before they haul off that miserable yellow wreck and traffic can get going again. So yeah, fuck at least 90% of Mustang drivers. I'm trying to live over here.

I'm deejaying Saints & Sinners Christmas night! Come through bitches.

CHRISTMAS NIGHT AT SAINTS: COME PARTY WITH (JES)US.

JESUS AND MY GIRLFRIEND ARE BOTH CAPRICORNS. Figures. They both have dreadlocks. They're both "practical and hardworking". They both have a talent for making me feel like Satan. And they have both found spots in the grubby petri dish of my heart. Yes, I have found Jesus. But not in the way that most people find him, i.e. finding a reason to live, or finding a reason to not smoke crack or beat your mother up because she keeps asking you why your wife never comes around anymore. For me, it was more like the way one finds an interesting book - which that day was Love Without Conditions, a slim paperback stuffed between the self-discovery manuals and huge jars of colonic powder crowding the bookshelves of a 'spiritual advisor' whose rat-infested Kauai home we rented when we visited Rojeanne and Brick last month. Now, ask me and I'll tell you all religions are Stone Age fairytales invented to keep the butcher from boning the preacher's wife. But I'll be damned (ha) if Jesus - or his ghostwriters (ha ha) - wasn't/weren't/aren't onto some revolutionary shit. I'd have a beer with the guy anyday.

And what better day than Christmas Day? I love buying people birthday drinks. You get to enjoy the gift with them. All anyone really wants is a damn drink anyway. When your best friend of thirty years mentions that it's their birthday at the bar, it's an easy way to make it seem like you remembered. It's bound to be cheaper than whatever other crap you probably would have bought them (if anything). And what better location to have a drink with the son of George Carlin than Saints & Sinners? They'll be cheaper than Bimbo bread and boxed wine for me (employee discount). I'll be playing James Brown and Black Sabbath's Christmas albums. And the joint is named after the both of us. Case closed.

So if any of you should find yourself on your knees in front of your or someone else's bed tonight or tomorrow night, do me a favor and let Young Beardly know that there's a few drinks with His name on them Friday night at 10899 Venice Blvd. in West LA. It's free to get in, and I'll be sure to have Ian blow his fireballs toward the back of the bar. I bet those locks of his would go up like a polyester sweater.

Oh, and the rest of you are invited too.

exclusive: Archeologists uncover CULVER WOMAN.

Archaeologists have found what may be the footprint of the first humanoid to ever exercise. It was found at the Culver City branch Of Bally Total Fitness, on the penultimate step of the stairway between the changing rooms and lobby. The slender, well-rounded shape of the footprint suggests that the humanoid was female, hence her nickname 'Culver Woman' in the press. The footprint was pointed in the direction of that one treadmill in the corner that only goes up to 6.2. The fact that the foot left a permanent impression in a stucco stair suggests that Culver Woman may have had an abnormally high bone density, or may have been a superhero of some sort.

That, or she was a woman with the kind of foot funk that could burn through plastic. Or maybe she stepped in a nice puddle of that Bally staph infection I keep hearing about. I think the CDC put it in the books last year. Or maybe she was running from one of the perverted personal trainers so hard that she ran a hole in a fucking stair. (Staph infection and staff infection? Twofer!) Forget project stairwells, the Bally stairwell will get you killed.

P.S: There is not, and has never been, an apostrophe-s on the end of Bally.