Sunday, December 30, 2007

It's been a spicy Christmas

In the run up to Christmas I unwittingly ended up in late night curry houses no less than seven times in two weeks, with the result that I now have shares in The Tandoori Bite and I broke out in a rash. Don't get me wrong - I'm a huge fan of curry and late night drinking, but there are limits.

The perpetually benevolent and infinitely tolerant staff of Dublin's surprisingly small number of late night joints have seen me at my messiest; in fact, I'd go so far as to say that they have enough on me to quite ruin my reputation in society. I suppose small-hour Indian restaurants are our generation's brothels or opium dens...with similar discretion exercised by staff vis-a-vis their gentlemen clientele.

They are wonderfully ararchic places; there's something of the pirate rowdy dow in them. I've seen all kinds of wonderful things in Indians: from butter knife fights to chilly eating contests, men face down in Vindaloo and girls having wings eaten out of their decolletage.

I especially lament the passing of the old Taj Mahal. It typified a less regulated, more scallywag Dublin that's being sanitised bit by bit in favour of diffused lighting and fusion cuisine.

May the last few good Indians standing maraud on into '08 and beyond.

And may this rash not...

Another Crisis in Foptown.

Monday, December 24, 2007

ID-iot

I rather stupidly went along to a Christmas gathering in a certain so-called 'It' bar in Dublin some night during the week. I can't be expected to rememeber the names of days during the Xmas follies. I suppose I was hoping I'd have the chance to see Glenda when I opened the toilet lid and then let nature's call call me.

Anyway, the person I'd gone with kept fluttering off on me. Now normally I wouldn't notice such a thing as I'd be fluttering myself senseless too, but these kinds of bars have a distinctly chavvy flavour and that scares me, to tell you the truth. One could quite easily look sideways at the wrong blond and end up with a child called Shakira.

So I skulked about drinking too much Vermouth, with the result that I very soon blacked out. I came to with my date pulling at my arm insisting that I was going the wrong way down Dawson Street. It turned out she was right. You see, fops are born with no sense of direction; it's a trade off- God endows us with impeccable taste, rapier sharp wit and timing, but challenges us by denying us the ability to get our bearings.

My date then informed me that on being introduced to the owner of the bar, I promised him six of the best and then pushed him. The man, reportedly a fop himself, simply looked at me blankly. I must tell you this kind of ungentlemanly behaviour is farcically out of character for me;I couldn't fight off a head cold. This prompts the question: why would I do such a thing? My date was sure I'd been spiked. I think the reasons were much more complex and altruistic. It can be summed up in a question. If you'd met Snow Patrol before their unexplained rise to fame, would you have bludgeoned them to death with a lump of hard Italian cheese...for the good of humanity?

I rest my case. My hands are clean.

Another Crisis in Foptown.

Have a very merry Christmas everyone in Fopland. And remember, where ever you may be, let your fop flag fly. And avoid chavvy 'It' bars.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Crisis in Dundrum Foptown Centre

I apologise for not filling you in on my daily travails yesterday, but the truth of the matter is I got lost in a shopping mall. I went into Dundrum Town Centre on Tuesday and only found my way out this evening when a security guard stopped me shouting at the sushi on the conveyor belt in the Japanese 'restaurant.' I had long since lost my wits at this stage after numer fits of pique and was simply asking the tempura if the conveyor belt was the best way out. I seemed to identify with the raw fish morsels.

It all started with the quest for a little Christmas shopping, which is usually fine in such places, but what I didn't realise was that I'd never gone into that gleaming pit of tracksuit-clad Luas-teens and suburbanites alone before. My innately foppish lack of a sense of direction or ability to concentrate on anything for more than a heart flutter actually worked against me for the first time in my life. It was very disconcerting indeed.

Four Starbucks half-caff soy white mochas gave me the fortitude to focus on myself for a while. I suspicioned that thinking of others may have contributed to my discombobulation, so I decided I'd pick up an outfit in House of Frazer. I was led to the basement where all the different brands do be and was flirting with a beige pair of Sand slacks when the sales assistant - a pale smelling sort of a whelp - asked me if I'd ever stepped outside my sartorial comfort zone. Actually, I'm not sure he was as eloquent as that, I think he just remarked that every item of clothing I was wearing was an earth colour and that I should try something that "really pops."

Next thing I'd lost all my purchases, my phone, my wallet, my earth coloured clothes and I was standing in front a mirror at a make-up counter gawking aghast at the vermillion red t-shirt and and prune crushed velvet trousers that the bad man had set upon me like a gaudy hound of hell. Infuriated, I set off running in search as a way out - it was like Hotel California.

The next twenty-four hours is a blur. I'm still recovering.

But I think the moral of the story is- comfort zones are there for a reason.

Another Crisis In Foptown.

Tune in tomorrow for another Crisis in Foptown. Same fop time, same fop channel.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Yet Another Crisis in Foptown for Party Jack

I awoke this morning with La Marseillaise trumpeting in my ears. I shook the violent anthem from my porcelaine pumpkin only to find that sounds of an angry mob still railled in the heating system of my soft suburban abode.

Curious indeed, I thought to myself as I scrolled through last night’s recovered doc in search of traces of Absinthe or other such head-soupers.


Gradually the bawdy cries became clear, and as they did, so dawned my panic. They weren’t in fact the cries of hungry French peasants weilding syphilitic pitchforks, but salt of the earth Irishmen. And though I don’t speak their particular dialect of Hiberno-English, I gathetred from their accents and their braying that they wanted middle-class blood. I remember their rioting in O'Connell Street...that was just an amuse bouche.

I dived under my bed, shivering in my Peter Panesque nightgown and cap, cluthing my David MacWilliams action figure, petrified quite out of my wits...

Helas, it’s finally happened, I thought, tired of their staple of batch bread and brown sauce, they’ve risen up against their cruel bourgeois masters to take back what The Celtic Tiger has denied them for so long. They’ve most likely stormed Mount Joy Prison and are at present pillaging and burning The Southside assunder.

With taximen and bus drivers at the eye of their rage, surely no graduate will be spared. I’m not ashamed to tell you that I peed myself a little when their roaringing machinery of murderous revolution started up. Terrible sounds–God, they must’ve enlisted the help of Polish builders and are going to bulldoze my stucco-clad walls. They’ll drag me from my Egyptian cotton bed, pour Linden Village on me and eat me alive. Oh the humanity–Bertie, Bertie! What have you done? What have we done? Fools, fools, debonaire fools every man Jack of us!

Then a drill started up; it seemed to be on the other side of the street. Are they going to ravish my neighbours first? Oh joy! My chance to escape...to some bastion of middle-classdom. Surely they’ll have walled off Killiney and Dalkey, possibly Fox Rock. And from there I can escape to Denmark where they have no working classes. I could become an abstract artist and have boring smug children.

I crawled to the window and peeked out...

To my surprise I was faced with a small group of burly men in yellow reflector jackets standing around watching one other of their kind drill the road. They were just laying cable for the ESB.

Yet another CRISIS IN FOPTOWN.

Tune in tomorrow for another of Party Jack’s Crises in Foptown

Monday, December 17, 2007

Crisis In Foptown

Okay, so me and the chaps decided to go into The Morgan last week for tapas in the bamboo smoking garden.

We sat down gingerly spouting Wildean witticisms, pereusing the menus while we smoked our cigarettes foppishly. Naturally we were tickled pink; the tapas is always top drawer in The Morgan. Boots on the street say they've captured a real live Spanish chef, most likely named Fulgencio, who possibly sports a pencil moustache.

When the excessively attractive Italian waitress came to take our drinks orders, the chaps were much dismayed as she didn't seem to be au fait with the beers requested. I smiled avuncularly at her cute ignorance and mouthed out, "Du-vel or Chim-ay Blue," confident that The Moragn would, as always, deliver the goods. Nevertheless, the chaps were rattled.

We waited in deathly silence, drowning in the wildly inappropriate House music they insist on pumping into the place 24/7. And though I assured the chaps it would be okay, the morale of the men was low. So, I thought a misogynistic joke might lighten things. "I wouldn't mind a messy drawn out invasion by her if I were Abbysinia just prior to WWII." But it was no good, the men were already afraid...afraid they'd have to drink Irish beer.

It took her ages to come back; the kind of ages that means bad info on a reconnaissance mission. We'd seen it before...before The Celtic Tiger delivered us from damp provinciality and Smithwicks.

She evantually arrived back smiling apologetically. "The barman he say we don't do anymore."
The news forced me to resist the compulsion to say, "We'll if you two don't do anymore, then I'll do!" It was no laughing matter. T'was as we feared- a dark dark day in Temple Bar. The day The Morgan lost its lustre; what had made it a fop's oasis in a sea of vulgar hen parties and stag nights. We shuffled heads down to Les Freres Jacques to drown our sorrows in champagne and rub caviar into our wounds.

A little petal on the delicate flower of my youth died in that smoking garden.

Just another CRISIS IN FOPTOWN


Tune in tomorrow for another of Party Jack's crises in foptown.

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