Where Everybody Knows Your Name....

There's an odd energy in the air this morning, and I can't put my finger on exactly what it is, all I know is that something is in the works. If you can, hit play on the video and listen to the theme music while you read today.....

After an entire weekend, sick, stuck in the house, I was getting stir crazy, I had to get out of there, but alas, at 9PM on a Monday night and real football still a ways off there isn't much to do out there. That's life as you get older and most of the people you know are married with kids. Which got me to thinking about all those days when they weren't, or still hung around if they were.

"Is the rain ever going to stop?" I heard from a friend. No, it isn't, Climate Change, baby!
"The economy sucks! When are things going to get better?" Not any time soon, so buckle in. Like I was saying yesterday Inside Why We're... the system is rigged like a Vegas Casino and the house always wins.
"Why can't I find anybody? dating sucks" Yes it does Brett, yes is does. And they're looking for someone to fill their holes, not to fill yours, so accept you might be stuck in that cycle for a while.....

And then it hit me like a Pimp on his bottom whoe
Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name....

I'm never so good as I am when I have that place that I can always go and be surrounded by friends, knock down a few, and laugh about whatever daily nonsense is going on. In high school it was the basement of a couple of friends, you never had to call, just show up. If they weren't home their mom would throw down the keys.

At Oklahoma State it was the house. My buddies moved in during my 2nd semester and we would have parties where a thousand kids would walk through the door by 10:30 and picked up by cops stumbling around, drunk, 3 miles away by the end of the night. It was right across the street from the dorms and though I didn't live there I might as well have; I had my own key.

McCann's in Astoria was good to me for a long time. I think I was in there literally every night for about a year until the party moved somewhere else. You never do so well (and I mean with the ladies) as you do on your home turf, and it's comforting to know you can just show up and someone you can chill with will be there.

And in Vegas, there was Larry's Villa, the strip club with pregnant dancers and meth addicts that I called my bar, and the Garage. All hail the Garage! (Pronounced Gah - Ridge).

Larry's Villa

No matter how old you get you're still always that kid in the tree house, your home made fort, where all the members of the club gather and find sanctuary from the outside world. Once there, even for just a few hours, everything is ok, the world is right again.

We all need our sanctuary's. But where does one go when you no longer have that place? The real beauty the show "Cheers" is that it captured all of that perfectly. It's why we fall in love with things like Seinfeld, Night Court and Married with Children. Its why we fall in love with the bar down the block, even though its a dump and half the customers are passed out with three green teeth. For some of us, the lucky ones of us, that place is our job, and the rest of the world is a cake walk from there. I've been lucky enough to have a few of those. You always look back on them as something that just can't be replaced.

And looking back, at these places, at the people who filled them, and filled us, it isn't something out of a Bruce Springsteen song trying to re-live our glory days... no, it's more akin to your old favorite room, to where the heart is; Home.

I never had that room in my parents house, I always moved around too much to set roots to a place that way, at one point we up and left about every 8 months. It's difficult to find that place in the world where you know exactly who you are and where you fit in like that, which I guess is why my passion has always been for those people in my life. Why once I call you friend, in my heart, you'll always be just as if we were transported back to that place again, that basement, that house, that bar, that gah-ridge.

So where do you go where everybody knows your name? Where is it that they're always glad you came?

Huh huh, he said came!

It's times like this that we need that the most. So grab me a beer and save me a seat. I'll be right there.