2007-10-10 - 8:39 p.m.

nearly every time b and i hang out, we pull some quirky aggressive youngster into our orbit. usually it's someone i'm inclined to avoid, but b engages him and we end up having a really interesting discussion. for example, there was the lanky painter from new hamshire who was battling an intravenous addiction but wanted to talk about late stage capitalism. another time we burned through a number of cigarettes chatting with a street artist who had strange ideas about notoriety (and whose favorite art supply was the new york post). so when the coke head dressed in golfing togs offered to buy us a round of drinks, of course i accepted.

predictably, it was a mistake. the cokehead not only wouldn't shut up for a second, but he actually crushed up and snorted some blow right at our table. he interrupted every sentence b or i managed to wedge into the conversation by singing smiths or cure songs and even at one point veered into rick astley. it was like a listening to a demonic jukebox loaded with the greatest hits of my tortured adolescence. he spun various disjointed tales of racism and lawyering, but i also noticed something else.

with every white man who stepped onto the patio, our candynosed friend addressed the man as either 'milhouse' or 'johnny depp'. as far as i could tell, if he thought a man was handsome, he was johnny depp, and a doltish or ordinary man was dubbed milhouse. once b and i figured out the code, we had a chuckle over such unusual pole stars. these labels applied only to men - all women seemed to be categorized as angels.

however we quickly tired of this shtick. as we took our leave to smoke and drink elsewhere, he introduced a third category, seemingly applied to white men with noticeable facial hair: jesus.