Velociworld

The Ming Spanky

As we bloggers were toasting Acidman's mortal remains, or what was left of them (anyone look in the box? Because I was fucking curious) at Spanky's, I was trying to explain to the few people who would attend to me that Spanky's was a special place because Robbie liked it, and because it was Grand Central Station for me in the mid 80's. I was in the steamship business then, and my job was to board the vessels upon arrival, and clear the ship with Customs, and USDA, and Immigration. Filthy graft was involved upon occasion, iffen the ship was Communist, but that was neither here nor there.

So I was explaining how we would spend most of the day in Spanky's, drinking beer, waiting for the vessels to show up. And when the ship would pass by Spanky's I knew I had exactly one hour to hoist another beer, and drive to Garden City Terminal to board said vessel. I was generally erect, but my knuckles were badly scraped.

Anyhoo, we had fancy walkie talkies then, cell phones being figments of Swedish nerds' imagination at the time. Our main principal at the time was Yang Ming Line. Fine Taiwanese brutes. All the ships were named Ming something. Ming Moon, Ming Sun, Ming Universe. And so the clarion call, the hidden message, was I'm sailing the Ming Spanky. That meant one was at Spanky's getting toasted, and the expected vessel was the excuse, why one was not in the office.

So I was explaining this during the post-wake, and gathering huge yawns, when Lo! Behold! A vessel approacheth.

I walked outside, and fired up a smoke, and I'll be damned if it wasn't a Yang Ming ship.

And so I went inside, and dragged Key out, and said "I'm sailing the Ming Spanky!" Because no one else would come. And she a tolerant individual.

Anyway, she said that's very nice VMan. You should take a pill. I smell Alzheimers. I agreed, because I was certainly apropos of nothing. But for one brief moment, I was, 20 years later, sailing the Ming Spanky. And it was sweet. Woo hoo. Rob would have understood. Or at least not made the circular finger to the forehead thing.