Rapid Eye Reality

Home of Brad Willis: writer, traveler, and suburban warrior

The Dive

by · November 11, 2009

Part 4 of the November iPhone Photo Project … aka…NaNo-iPho

June 2009

The night before Phish hit Asheville, NC, some friends were in town to get an early start on the fun. Part of the night included my local friends taking everybody to our favorite dive. It’s a little quonset hut turned dive bar on the road out of town, the kind of place where plastic checkered racing flags hang from the ceiling, the specials are Miller Lite, Jack Daniels, and not-hipster-ironic PBR. Crusty men with bad attitudes play pool, everyone turns to look at you when you walk in, and someone has taped comic strips above the urinals. If you stand there long enough, a closeted gay guy will ask suggestively, “Do you like comics?” It’s also the kind of place where people do exceptionally bad karaoke. Most of it’s country–Travis Tritt, Kenny Chesney, Garth Brooks. Every once in a while you’ll hear some rock and roll.

Toward the end of the night, The Joker stood up and whispered something to the effect of “This is either going to be epic or it’s going to get us killed.” And he walked to the stage. And we all grabbed for our tabs, because this was certainly not the place for anything The Joker was about to do. And that’s when The Humpty Dance came over the karaoke speakers.

“This is how we do it Colorado, yo!” he said into the mic.

And there he sang the Humpty Dance. The crowd, after a stunned moment of silence, started dancing. And cheering. And erratically loving the Joker.

Apropos of nothing, he pointed to our buddy at the table and screamed, “That’s my friend, G-Rob! He owns this place!”

The picture itself doesn’t speak to the moment, but it reminds me of one of the top five funniest things I saw happen all year.

leegs

Brad Willis

Brad Willis is a writer based in Greenville, South Carolina. Willis spent a decade as an award-winning broadcast journalist. He has worked as a freelance writer, columnist, and professional blogger since 2005. He has also served as a commentator and guest on a wide variety of television, radio, and internet shows.

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3 Responses

  1. gracie says:
    November 11, 2009 at 2:30 pm

    Who can not love The Joker? No one. No one can not love The Joker.

  2. StB says:
    November 11, 2009 at 2:42 pm

    After seeing the picture, I kinda wish the story had to do with Pauly’s bald spot. Good story though.

  3. otis says:
    November 11, 2009 at 2:55 pm

    StB–At the WSOP final table this year, a lot of us sat up in a sky box and looked down on the rest of the media in the orchestra pit. From that high up, it was hard to tell the difference between Pauly and Dan M. Finally, Change settled it for us by saying, “That’s Dan. His bald spot is bigger.”