IPW

Noise Sando

In further response to the hurt feelings following the mean drawings the Prophet Mohammed, I offer this drawing depicting all the other important figures of world religion. Hopefully this will even the score and we can all just get along. Here you go:

And now to report on the lives that we are living, I will bang a gong that many of you have heard before, ad nauseam. I call this particular firehole: "Noise Sando" or Noise Sandwich for those of you who don't speak Californian. We are the Meat in a noise sandwich. The neighbors upstairs are French. And noisy. Those two things don't necessarily go together but in this case it's relevant. The neighbor next door to us is a musician, on the other side of the hall lives a competitive door slammer. The fellow downstairs is an artist (fueled artistically by Rock). We are the overly old couple in the middle of the sandwich who try hard not make too much noise, not necessarily because we are nice, but we don't want to start a noise war of ever escalating volume. I have now had tepid conversations with all of these people, with the French on several occasions. The latest occasion was during a party they had on Saturday to celebrate their 2nd wedding anniversary. I'm glad we didn't live downstairs from them on their wedding night if their anniversary party and the one they had a few months ago are any indication of their ability to cause a ruckus. As is their habit, they wrote a note alerting the building that it would be shaken to its foundations on this night. Something to the effect of "We are having a party on Saturday night, please come and have drink, if you don't want to come thank you for your patience." We're thinking, What does that mean? You are invited, and now that you are invited we have no obligation to behave responsibly? Several nasty comments were anonymously scrawled on this note (by us) and another one telling them to 'have fun!', perhaps scrawled by them. We were flamming each other, analog style.
We planned accordingly and stayed out very late on that night. That is, we got home at 3:30 in the morning thinking that they would have at least started to mellow. But here is where their nationality comes in. Europeans in general have the uncanny ability to stay up all night long. They seem to equate sleep with fascism. We left our apartment at 10.30 to go to a party at a friend's (nobody lives above or below them if you were thinking you'd caught us in our hypocrite's web) and were startled to see that the French population of Brooklyn was shuffling towards our building like party crazed zombies. They were carrying bottles of wine in their un-dead hands. It is not a coincidence that the dead don't sleep either. When we returned hours later we could see that they were still going strong by the ominously violet lights burning in their windows. Sure enough, as we started to get into bed and put in our earplugs, they turned up the music (Beyoncé) and started riverdancing in tap shoes. In a few seconds, I was re-dressed and walking up the stairs to knock on their door. When one of the guests finally answered I was invited in, a potential partyer. In fact I was quite warmly welcomed by everyone except the hosts who burned a hole through my head with their eyes. How dare you show up after you were invited? I could see thought bubbles above their heads with pictures of me scribbling nasty comments on their ad-hoc advertisement. I was brought to where the royal couple presided and it occurred to me I had entered the Williamsburg Heart of Darkness. Surrounded by cigarette smoke and that malevolent violet light, I pleaded my case for less Beyoncé. "At least turn it down by half" I asked, thinking of a dull thud instead of bone-shaking explosions of base. The crowd grumbled around me. French was spoken. They were thinking about lighting the torches. 'Bruce' the Patriarch, took a long dramatic drag of his cigarette and asked, "I think you live with your girlfriend, yes?"
"Wife" I answered. He nodded as if his intensely insightful question was answered.
A young woman who was not from the Continent whispered quietly that they would try to keep it down and started escorting me to the door, but not before another woman stopped me.
"Why are you complaining? Is it so late?" This was a challenge, who was I to want to sleep on a Saturday night, a fascist?
"Well," I answered, "It is 4am, and we do live right below you, separated by two sheets of plywood."
There was much unrest as the zombies realized I was living flesh, they hungrily licked their lips. My Pocahontas ushered me again towards the door with more promises of silence. And I left to report to my wife.

The music did not stop, but was turned down slightly, and with earplugs in, we gradually nodded off to sleep, tapping our toes to the beat.

I give their party a 2. They get an extra point for atmosphere.

Posted by ian at March 31, 2006 10:38 AM