About four years ago, my old roommate Brian and I were snowed in our tiny, fifth floor apartment in Lower East Side.  A major storm had hit and dumped over a foot of snow on New York City and both our offices had closed, giving us a rare snow day off.  It was a Monday.  Our apartment was disaster from the weekend: empty beer cans, ash trays overflowing with cigarettes, and pizza boxes and crusts were strewn about.  We sat there in the filth, unable to go out because of the snow and unable to clean because of our laziness/hangovers, and did the only thing we could think of: sat around and smoked a lot of pot.  Also, I jerked off.  Twice.

(But in the privacy of my bedroom, not in the living room with Brian.  Well, one time I started in the living room, but took it to the bedroom for the crescendo.)

After a while, I got a food craving.  I decided that if I did not get nachos within the hour, a murder-suicide might occur – or at least I would end up shaving all my pubes (it was pretty dope weed).  No one would deliver nachos in such inclement weather, but I didn’t want diner or restaurant nachos, the kind piled high with cheese and beans and sour cream and salsa and beef/chicken/chili.  I wanted movie nachos, the shitty kind that come in the plastic tray with two dozen cheap, slightly stale, over-salted tortilla chips and a ladle full of orange cheese that has been exposed for an indeterminate amount of time and thus has a skin on top.  That is what I’m talking about. 

Preying upon his weakness for movie popcorn and the fact that he was high, I convinced Brian that we should go to the movies.  It would enable us to get out of the disgusting apartment, kill some time, and eat gross food.  The Sunshine was only right around the corner from us anyway, and it might be fun to trudge in the snow over there to take in a flick.  Dreaming of fake liquid butter and processed cheese goo, off we went (but not before smoking a little bit more).

The snow was not as scary as we thought and we quite enjoyed the walk.  After arriving, we had no particular movie that we wanted to see, and the Sunshine is an artsy-fartsy theater, not exactly showing "Terminator 2" or even "Blade 3."  After checking out our options, we chose a movie called "The Barbarian Invasions," mostly because it was playing shortly, but also because it had a cool title.  If I had to put money on it, I’d bet I’d see at least one sword in a movie with that title.

Imagine our surprise then when Brian and I sat in the empty theater, nachos, pop corn and sodas in tow, to learn that the movie was in French (with subtitles).  Not only that, but there were no barbarians in the movie.  No warriors of any sort, even.  Just a bunch of French-Canadian people.  I mean, fuck.  

Despite the absence of swords and words in English, something magical happened: Brian and I got totally into the movie.  Maybe it was the food or the weather or the pot (it was definitely the pot, which, again, was dope), but we were enraptured by this story of a man dying of cancer trying to make peace with his son, ex-wife, old lovers and friends.  It was an incredibly stirring movie – with an intense and heart-wrenching ending that you can probably figure out (hint: they didn’t discover the cure for cancer) – and when the lights came on in the theater, Brian and I sat there motionless, overwhelmed with emotion (did I mention we were high?).  Eventually, we got up to leave and the first words Brian said were, "Man, my allergies are killing me – this place is really dusty."  Emotions.  Everywhere.  Ceiling.  Floors.  Walls.  Emotions.Brian and I didn’t speak again about the movie or that afternoon until about a year later, when I abruptly said, "Dude, do you remember when we got high on the snow day and saw that French movie and it was more emotion than either of us ever felt in our lives?"  Enough time had passed for us to be able to talk and laugh about that afternoon, but what I said was true.  We were genuinely moved by the movie.  Intense.  Emotion.  All over the place.  Wow.  I had never been moved like that before, and have not since.

*******

On this past Saturday, I woke up with a vicious hangover, thanks to several shots of warm $2 whiskey the night before.  I haven’t been sleeping much either; every few weeks I’ll go through this process, a sort of slow but light insomnia, during which I will wake up at 5:30am on work days (usually wake up at 8am) and 9am or 10am on the weekends (not exactly "late", but keep in mind I go to bed around 5am and rise at noon at the earliest).  On this morning I was out of bed at 10am, in the shower, trying to fight this hangover.

My buddies Bill and Joe, the latter whose best man I’ll be in seven weeks, were visiting from Boston.  I needed to pull it together because I knew they’d want to go out and wouldn’t take my hangover as an excuse.  Though I couldn’t give an F about BC sports, Bill and Joe sure do, and they were determined to hit up a bar to watch the BC game, which tipped off at 1:30pm.  It was going to be a long, long day. 

Off to the bar we went, and though the first one was rough, the beers tasted good.  I also made my customary bet against BC, taking UNC +11, and BC rewarded me by playing some of the most indifferent college basketball I’ve seen in a long time and I won the bet.  The beers tasted better.

All told, we sat at the bar for seven hours.  Me, Bill, Joe, Don Fiedler of Slack Lalane, and later buddies Brian, Jeremy, and Josh – just a group of guys getting drunk and talking sports, something I look forward to doing for 72 straight hours when I go to Boston this Thursday night for a long weekend.   

Of course I was drunk, but I was feeling pretty good.  I think that since I drank so late the night before and slept so little, I never really sobered up.  Add to that the winning bet and the laughter and good times and I was feeling it, baby, and having a ball.  All this a far cry from last week, which was one of the longest and most difficult work weeks of my life.  I needed a day to relax.

Just after eight, after sharing only chicken fingers between us, we decided it might be wise to get something to eat.  At this point, we split; Bill, Joe, Don and Josh went to get burgers in Brooklyn, while Brian, Jeremy and I went straight for cheesesteaks in the West Village.  I told my Brooklyn-bound friends that I’d join them later in the evening, after I went home for a spell to eat my cheesesteak and freshen up. 

Jeremy realized he had a show to go to and abruptly split, but Brian and I went back to my place to eat, have some beers, and smoke a little grass (which I had to go all the way out fucking Greenpoint to pick up last weekend – I miss Cartoon).  As per our usual, we put on VH1 Classic while all this was going on.  And then it came on.

Behind the Music: Pantera.

Well.

Though I know and enjoy a few of their songs, I would not call myself a Pantera fan.  I know they’re serious fucking metal.  I know that Dimebag Darrell was on the cover of "Guitar World" magazine at least every other month during my prime playing days in the 90′s.  And I know that Dimebag was murdered on stage during a show.

But though I had seen countless episodes of "Behind the Music" and I knew they followed the same basic formula, I was not prepared – emotionally, mentally, physically, or criminally - for the episode about Pantera.

And even though I knew how it would end, it was only a matter of time before the wheels started coming off in my living room.  Because I had tivo’ed the show, we were able to skip the commercials and keep the roller coaster of emotions going full bore: the love between Darrell and his brother and drummer Vinnie Paul, the introduction of singer Phil Anselmo into the band, the wild parties with hard rock icons, and the inevitable fall of the band because Phil’s problems.  Brian and I sat there drinking Chinese beer, mesmerized, drawn in, and morbidly waiting, almost salivating, to hear about Dime’s murder.

Sure enough, ample time is given to the events of December 8, 2004, which were explained not only by Dime’s friends who were there, but in video footage taken during the evening.  On that night, Dimebag and his brother were playing in Columbus, Ohio with their new band Damageplan.  Ten seconds into the first song, a former Marine named Nathan Gale calmly walked on stage with his pistol drawn and shot five rounds into Dimebag’s head.  In the hysteria that followed, three others were also killed – a club employee, a club bouncer, and a fan, picked off as they rushed to help Dimebag.  Roadie Kat Brooks was shot three times and held hostage by Gale, until a police officer entering through the back shot Gale in the head and ended the nightmare.  Though the police responded to the club in three minutes, Dimebag was dead. 

Well.

Years of excessive cigarette smoking have permanently dried up Brian’s tear ducts, and as part of a bet I lost with God in 1995, I can only cry while having sex.  Had this not been the case ("Had these not been the cases?"), Brian and I surely would have turned my apartment into a river, a river of tears and Chinese beer.  Like "The Barbarian Invasions" all those years before, he and I sat motionless as the show ended with Dime’s dad crying, saying in his Texan accent what a good boy Darrell was, and embattled drug-addicted singer Phil Anselmo saying that he needs Dime’s brother and Pantera drummer Vinnie Paul in his life right now, even though the two not have spoken in years.  "I just need him right now."

Emotions.  Everywhere.  Ceiling.  Floors.  Walls.  Emotions.

The show ended and we sat a while longer without saying anything.  Finally, I stood up and said "I need a break" and went into my spare bedroom/shitty office/den of sin and looked out the window to the street below, watching the tourists dining in Little Italy.  I contemplated calling it night – I had already been drinking for ten hours by that point, and though my friends were visiting me, they were at an unknown location in Brooklyn and hadn’t answered my texts or phone calls in hours.  Maybe taking it easy after such a wide emotional ride would be the best thing.  And I was pretty sure that I could not physically fit any more beer into my body.

But as I sipped my Tsingtao and looked out the window at all the tourists and Long Islanders/New Jerseyites below, I thought to myself, "God, I hate them."  And then I thought, "No – I can’t stay in tonight.  If he were here, Dime would tell me to stop being a pussy, pound the beer I was drinking, and then go get laid, get in a fight, or both."  Convinced that this was true and my fate, I stormed out of the spare bedroom and into the living room, where I found Brian standing up and dancing with the bowl in his hand, Black Sabbath’s "Supernaut" blasting out of my iPod speakers.  Brian handed the bowl to me and said, "Dude, it’s what he would have wanted."

I smoked some more and then we went out, met my friends and stayed out until 4am (well, 5am, if you count daylight savings time). 

I did not get laid (though some hot Asian chick said I was "endearing").

I did not get in a fight (though Brian fell off a bar stool).

But we fucking partied it up.

I would like to dedicate my performance on Saturday, March 10, to the memory of Darrell Lance Abbott.  May you rest in peace and rock in heaven, you glorious son of a bitch.