Wassup: The Party. New Year’s Eve 2005. Raw Dog. 5 DJs. 200 people. 1 blown amp. 1 recovered purse with $5,500 in it. 1 debauched speech. 1 averted fist-fight. Too much alcohol. I had no clue that my friends were so disgusting. Everyone looks like zombies.

These were all taken by Jason White on 1/14/06 at a party after an Emergency Broadcast System/The Title Ceremony/Cities show.

When my teeth pierced the fragile fruit’s surface I knew it’s wealth had to be shared. So I let Kissyface have a bite. By that time, rumors of it’s supple deliciousness had begun to circulate amongst the party goers. What happened next was unfathomable. Luckily, world renowned photojournalist Jason White was there to catch the whole thing.

The first thing that popped in my head the next morning was “I hope nobody had a cold sore.”

Thursday night was opening night for my brand new friend Sullivan Dunn’s art exhibit “Japanimals” at 008. It started off with red wine, art talk and pictures of cute little doggies but soon progressed into one of the most horrifyingly awesome Thursdays in recorded history.

The first thing to go awry was a little girl who goes by the street name Puddlepatch. I’m not sure what initially sparked Puddlepatch’s bravery although I’m told she was either refused alcohol or was kicked out, but I do know that she was involved in some sort of dispute and felt the need to react. She did so by pulling down her pants and placing her drunken buttocks on the front window of 008. At that point I felt the need to exit the premises. Then me and Todd followed Android to a wine tasting, before taking shots at Penthouse, and blabbing it up and with Kissyface and Tamara at Souyia. Down the steps, on our way out, Tamara knocked over a beer bottle which scared the shit out of Android because he mistakenly thought it was some dude throwing beer bottles at us (Android was under the impression that he had rudely closed the exit door on some random guy who felt the need to retaliate by hurling beer bottles at us.) Anyway, Android is all rushing us down the stairs while I’m staging a struggle to get up the stairs to fight the pretend guy who didn’t really throw the bottle. He’s all like “No! It’s not worth it!” and holding me back from the fight and pushing me down the stairs until he can alert the bouncers to the threat of the enraged bottle-thrower.

When we get outside we realize that our next stop, Tango, is over a 1/2 block away. Not wanting to walk that far in the miserable Carolina winter we opt to take a cab. When the cabbie asks us our desired location we tell him 2nd and Princess which was by that time exactly where we were at. So he yells at us and charges us $3 and we get out and go into Tango where Puddlepatch is drunk and keeps falling down on her head. At some point my brother Homeless Steve slapped my screwdriver out of my hand and onto the floor where it smashed into itty bitty pieces. The bartenders yelled at me and I offered to sweep it up. That was about 1 in the A.M. and that’s when I decided to refrain from alcohol.

All of these bad boys were taken 01/27/06 at Berzerko’s Freebase Friday. Lots of fun, lots of pizza, lots of drama. The first half of the night was populated by no more than a handful of whippersnappers. Come 11:45 about 100 party people poured in and began to drink, dance, and fight, signifying yet another success.

It was the last. It was a house party. But was it the greatest? Thanks to the cops we may never know. But what we did learn is that people have no shame. Take for example, the mysterious man known only as “The Gentleman Caller.” Somehow this handsome and photogenic young man managed to puke all over himself, and then become instantly irate, refusing to leave the party, despite the protest and disgust of many. Paparazzi princess Isaac “Sneaky Nutsack” Sandlin was there to harass the puke-soaked Gentleman Caller and document the confrontation. Keeping with the theme of shameless puking, Angela “Puddlepatch” Chambers took advantage of the party as an excuse to throw up all over the place and make-out with girls. Speaking of excuses, was it really necessary for Jarvis to have a party just so he could parade around in an oversized thrift store bathrobe? Perhaps not, but it was worth it to see an evangelical Jarvis Slacks on the microphone preaching from his couch pulpit and kicking people out of the house. While the jury is out on the debate of the greatest house party ever, a more important question remains: will the house really delete its Myspace account now that it’s party is over?

This was the first night of the weekly Tuesday night Ant Farm/Crush Calculator spin session.  Thanks to the Carolina-Duke game, the party was censored until about 11 and soon after problems began to surface with the P.A. system. Just when the vibe was in jeopardy there was a knock at the door from a sweet angel named Judy Gibbs.

Judy Gibbs is a 55 year-old motorcyclist who will soon be opening an antique store/K-9 rescue unit on Front St. She doesn’t do drugs (besides beer) and practices religious stand-up comedy in her spare time. She loves flea markets, her clogs, and her friends over at Top Toad who get her clever shirts that read “Tan Naked: Put some color in your cheeks,” and “Yes, I’m a girl, and yes, I can kick your butt.” When Judy moonwalked in the party started faster than flypaper. Soon the Brewery was drowning in a sea of $2 high alcohol-content drafts, embarrassing 80’s music, bad dancing, and trademark Berzerko drunken skirmishes. 

I am writing in reference to the giant racist mural at the Downtown Post Office. Is this supposed to be a joke? Is Ashton Kutcher about to pull off his mask and tell me and the rest of Wilmington that we have just been Punk’d? If not, do you mind telling me which one of you Dixiecrats is reponsible for this masterpiece, and at what point it sounded like a good idea to spend your citizen’s hard-earned tax dollars on this over-sized nigger joke.

Don’t get me wrong, I respect your right to be disgusting bigots, I’m just not sure that this is the best canvas for you to express that. I mean, I kind of feel like with the Wilmington Ten thing and that whole 1898 Race Riot we already have enough racial tension. I kind of feel like we don’t really need a doodle depicting a bunch of shirtless negroes unloading barrels for debutants hovering over us. Ask any true Republican or Southern Democrat and he will tell you the essence of American politics is keeping the racism closeted. We know you hate minorities and that’s why we vote for you. However, we still like to pretend like we love them because it’s trendy, and when the officials we vote into office expose our ulterior motives we don’t look as stylish. So do White Wilmington a big favor and replace the mural with some hip-hop graffiti or if you insist on “keeping it real” at least replace some of the shirtless black guys with Gays and Hispanics.

Sincerely,
Sonny Galloway

I had to see Dr. Buttnik every Friday after school. One of my very few friends would call me up earlier in the week and ask if I wanted to come over for a sleepover after school on Friday. I’d ask my mom and she’d say, “No sweetie, remember, you’re going to visit Dr. Buttnik”.

Dr. Buttnik was a fucking freak. He was my dad’s age, balding with a full beard. What the fuck kid wants to open up to a weirdo like this? I would walk down the hall to his office and pass one of his colleagues’ on the way. She was blonde and pretty and a lot younger. She had the coolest toys all over her office and I was jealous of whichever kid got to visit her every Friday. But then I’d walk into Dr. Buttnik’s office and he had some wooden dolls and this dollhouse that some other kid had fucked all up. I asked him, “Where’s the sink?”

He said, “A little boy who is very sad and angry ripped it out. Do you sometimes want to break things too?”

Dr. Buttnik would leave his office door open while he drilled me on the meanings of my crayon drawings. Meanwhile, my A.D.D. was all kindsa flaring up as I looked out the door and across the hall at the pretty Dr.’s office where she and some lucky kid were playing a game on her computer. Dr. Buttnik didn’t have a computer and I asked him if he thought she’d let us borrow hers. He ignored me.

Then one day, at the end of one of our visits, Dr. Buttnik brought both of my parents in to discuss the possibility of medicating their slightly overactive daughter. He told them about this miracle drug called, “Ritalin”. Allow me to digress for a moment….I think its pretty shitty that when I was growing up, any boy who was a little excitable, willing to “talk-back” to a teacher, who brought forbidden items to school like gum and firecrackers, and who was an all-around little asshole was like the most popular kid ever. These boys were praised for their bad-assedness. But when any girl behaved this way, they were shamed and punished and socially excommunicated. Let me give you an example…

This one kid, Jimmy, along with his kindergarten girlfriend, Anna, would wait until our kindergarten teacher left the room, stand up on the desks, pull their pants down and dance in front of the giggling class. I remember Ann reenacting some strip tease she’d probably seen on television and Jimmy’s little dangle flopping around in the air.

They got away with this for months before someone finally told on them or our teacher caught them, whichever came first. Jimmy got more high-fives for what he’d pulled while Anna endured shameful head shaking and whispering on into high school. Now granted, she became a huge slut and fucked EVERYONE, even public school kids, but I maintain, to this day that it wasn’t her fault. Social criticism and double standards pushed her into an unhealthy lifestyle, and only for being a six-year-old badass.

ANYWAY…So I let my mom stick that bitter little pill in my mouth every morning. There were two of us in the entire grade that took Ritalin and it required a special little field trip to the nurses’ office after lunch. Chet Sanders (another little fuckstick badass who everyone loved) would receive in a little paper Dixie cup that teeny-tiny, greenish, whitish, grayish pill.

These were no Flintstone Vitamins. They were the least kid-friendly pills ever with no gel-coating or fun dinosaur shapes they’d dissolve in your little esophagus and burn all the way down.

It was amazing, because every time I took this wonderful medicine, I felt the need to buckle down and learn my ABC’s instead of playing flashlight tag or eating fruit-rollups.

I willingly took that shit from second grade until I was a senior in high school. At a certain point I realized I had a little something called “free-will”, this new found virtue, combined with greed prompted me to sell it to kids who liked to put it up their nose instead of swallowing with a fucking smile on my face everyday after lunch.

Well thank god my parents were well enough off to medicate me with generic metamphetamines or whatever the fuck that awful shit is. It worked wonders. I was able to maintain an ideal weight of 88lbs as well as a “C” average throughout high school. It was probably the only reason I got into the prestigious UNCW.

Just look at me now, I work at a beer bar and I’ve only been in college for six years. Thanks Mom and Dad.

-Allison Butler

This week’s floggable fashion faux pas is the hat we have penned “The Oliver Twist.” While being a malnourished, filth-ridden and impoverished orphan boy from some dreary over-industrialized English town may seem fashionable and appealing to someone like a Somalian refugee, to most, it is not an attractive or desired look. Unless you get paid in shillings, ate gruel for two out of three meals yesterday, or are currently a professional pickpocket or fledging blacksmith’s assistant, you should not own this hat.

It seems that only in the obesity-inducing prosperity of America could young fashionistas get their kicks “slumming it” by constantly playing underprivileged dress-up and pretending to be far less fortunate than the ATM receipts from their trust funds would actually indicate. Perhaps the same parents who paid your out-of-state college tuition could also afford to chip in on a new fashion accessory for your head that it is more indicative of your real roots — like a huge bag of dirty money that spills all over the floor when you fall over drunk at parties or perhaps a stuffed peacock top-hat that is plated with gold and squawks incessantly when you enter a room. Save us the psychological homage bullshit excuse for your pauper posturing — your great-grandparents, who really were immigrants and actually struggled for survival in the traditional sense, only wore that kind of hat because they couldn’t afford anything nicer. That’s not to say that The Oliver Twist has never been fashionable. Indeed, this look worked quite well for the destitute drifter rodent Fievel in “An American Tail”, but unless you are a lonely and naive Russian-immigrant mouse who has lost his way and has been separated from his family in a strange and intimidating new land of foreigners, do us all a favor and take off that stupid hat.

-Takey Breakerton