Central Squared

(December 14, 2001)

This is a story about last Friday night, December 7th.

At the pinnacle of the evening, I stood in Central Square, toying with my new mushroom elf and trying to watch firefighters, but Short Fat Daniel Baldwin wouldn't shut up. Short Fat Daniel Baldwin was the only one not gawking at the fire. Instead, he wanted to talk, loudly, about ugly women who can cook. "I HATE the fuckin' pretty ones, HOO ya! I had a pretty one once. Fuckin' ass like fuckin' THIS. Could fuckin' burn WATAH!"

Hey, I could've easily stayed home last Friday night, but then I'd have nothing to tell you. I should have just stayed in quietly and let Hub practice his new *Chess moves on me. I was kinda tired because of my busy week. Let's see...I'd gone out on Wednesday to the Abbey. It was last minute, me and Wolf went to see **Anita and Goody (both ex-Groovasaurus) do a quick set of bluesy, loungey covers. Thursday, Hub had school, so I went over to the Kirkland, having heard from the aforementioned that ***Chris Mascara would astonish the room with a set of theatrical Memphis blues. And I knew that I'd be out all night Saturday, at T Max's 50th birthday party.

Friday.

The multi-talented Lisa had informed her adoring public that she'd be peddling her special brand of weirdness at, for real, a Punk Arts & Crafts show. After a nice dinner at the Rosebud, (mmm, spicy shrimp and rum spiced cider, let's do lunch there soon, m'kay?) Hub and I walked over to the punkfest at the Davis Square VFW. Yeah. My curiosity was sated to the fullest within minutes. Totally uncomfortable. We bolted before Hub could finish his beer. I did, however, get a charming little elf ornament. He's hugging a three-headed mushroom. Lisa made him and I will hang him over my desk. (Who's weirder? Lisa for making him or me for paying her ten dollars for him? Discuss amongst yourselves).

Done with Davis, we made our way over to Central Square and TT the Bear's Place, where I had to catch **** Ramona Silver. The band after Ramona was called Roxie, and they held our interest for about eight minutes. Generica McBoring and Pals, upon asking for the room to clap along to some dreck of a song, actually drove us out into the street, forgoing seeing the talented Dave Aaronoff play. (Sorry Dave. How does it feel to be so cute and so blown off?)

When you leave TT's, you pretty much walk towards Mass Ave in order to get, well, anywhere at all. Hub and I walked past the always-open Hi Fi Pizza, past the McDonald's that smells like an old belly button. A few steps after McBellybutton's, at the *****dance complex, I felt compelled to jump out of the way. What the...yeah, that'd be a spark of something burning? Which you don't normally like to see falling, you know, ON you as you walk down the street in your city? Looking up, I see what is quite clearly the underside of a porch, and it has a big hole in it. Something burning on the porch had burned right through it and the whole mess was smoldering.

We crossed the street as first one person and then another and another started to notice that Central Square was in fact on fire. You know, there are always about eighty million cops in Central. Right then, not one. "Of course!" I said to Hub. He said, "It's okay, that guy is telling one of the cabbies."

"What's he gonna do, honk the fire out?"

"No, cabs have radios. He can radio the cops."

Indeed, as we stood, across the street by now, watching the dance complex porch pour out more and more smoke, we started to hear sirens. There followed an impressive display of Cambridge emergency action. Within minutes, the police had blocked off both ends of Central Square, and there were two or three engines, an ambulence, and some motorcycle cops.

It really was kind of way overkill, but impressive nonetheless.

So as Cambridge's finest spilled out of their vehicles, called back and forth to each other, and hauled out large, confidence-inspiring equipment...well, you know how, in a crowd of people, you can kinda tell out of the corner of your eye that someone is looking at you? And in your head you're going "don't look, don't look." But of course you look.

This squat little Oompa Loompa of a guy, like five feet tall with a big ol' belly, baseball jacket emblazoned with the name of a film company we never heard of, is pacing the area where the crowd is gathering. And he's looking for someone whose eye he can catch. "Chuh!" he's scoffing. Shaking his head. "Ha!" Waddling in a circle. "Fuh! Idiots." He's got his dark hair slicked into a 'do like one of the Baldwins, or maybe one of the Sheens. He's got mail with him. Like, envelopes.

I look right at him.

Now my life will never be the same.

I cannot re-create here the conversation that then ensued, except to summarize that this guy is new to the area ("I'm rich! I came here and fuckin' bought up half of fuckin' Revere!") and doesn't plan to stay ("I got two months in dis hole. I'm gonna fuck up yer city.") supposedly has inside information into the Cambridge emergency process ("My fuckin' cousin is over dere.") and is allegedly in the film industry ("We're makin' a movie. Everybody's in dis fuckin' ding. Biggest fucker is dat Daniel Baldwin. What an asshole!"). A large part of his diatribe (I don't think Hub or I said two words in fifteen minutes) had to do with women, at one point calling out "Hey, nice ass!" to a trio of rather homely girls. "Gotta find me an ugly woman who can cook."

All the while, the firefighters have evacuated the dance complex, and extended two ladders up to the burning porch. I'd thought I was looking at the result of a candle left unattended on the porch, but someone in the crowd was saying that a guy from an upper floor threw a burning bundle out the window and it landed on the porch. Whatever it was, it was deceptively small. When I first saw it, I'd thought if someone would just dump a glass of water on it they could all go home, but it must have had some kind of flammable stuff in it, because the porch was smoking and smoldering for a long time.

"Okay, now I'll tell ya who I am," the guy said. He held up his mail for Hub to look at. "Now I gotta go find me a Guinness and a woman." He walked away.

"What did it say?"

"Daniel Baldwin."

"Oh my god, he thinks he's Daniel Baldwin?"

You know, we had one more thing to do that night, which was to find Luke's birthday party, which, because it's Luke and his friends, was somewhere in the expensive part of Boston proper at some place called McSomething's that would likely charge us seven bucks a drink.

Instead, we went home and did crossword puzzles. After you buy a punk elf and Fat Daniel Baldwin accosts you at a fire, there really isn't anything else to do.

*That's what we did Monday night. Chess, while watching the Dolphins beat the pants off the Colts. Yes, Lexi made a sports reference. Don't ask, I can't even explain to myself.
**Anita sings so pretty it's like a physical ache. I hope Wolf asks her to sing at the Mardi Gras thing.
***Chris is sexy as hell and an amazing vocalist, but I gotta say, I wasn't quite high enough for that. Picture Ronnie James Dio doing a James Brown impression. I...I don't know what to DO with it...
****Cannot. Simply cannot. Say enough about Ramona Silver. The new CD is going to make a big dent in this scene.
*****This is funny. While writing this I tried to find a news item on the fire, to find out what caused it. All I found was the program description, about what the dancers were DOING that night: "We will use the basic movements of belly dance to express our experience of the traditional four elements: earth, air, water, and fire." Well they got fire and water anyway...