Blue Star

By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Awakenings
Lawn Love has released this year’s click-bait poll ranking best and worst U.S. cities to have a hangover. Coming to dazed, dizzy and dehydrated in San Francisco beats Montgomery, Ala., respondents voted.
Others preferred to enjoy D.T.’s and vomiting in Miami, New York City, Boston, Washington, D.C. and Chicago unable to focus on prices yet. Also on the barrel’s bottom: Jackson, Miss.; Fayetteville, N.C.; Pasadena, Texas, and Joliet, Ill., in or out of prison.
Pullman — a legend, not city — didn’t qualify. Waking up outside the tavern, muddy boot prints smearing broken glasses and trash blowing up against you? Not to miss.
On our lawn where my wife hurls me semi-comatose most nights, my spine clinks Slinky-like lying on holes dug by Orie, our late pit bull. Eyes open on three Orions blazing and blurring overhead, if still night. If not, I fry retinas squinting square into sun till I tilt my head 90 degrees per its axis, seeing now illumined.
Lawn Love’s buzz investment pays: a green carpet will ride me to spring Lazarus-like, grab my cell and call Tuff Turf Molebusters.
Its neon-green van pulls in reliably crowned by a plastic mole model in a mining helmet, doors disgorging uniformed troops wielding Rodinators. My delirium is complete.
On my mole-less and mow-less lawn I will build a barbecue deck to sizzle meat, serve needy neighbors from a tiki bar and land back in Joliet for inflicting fun without license.
“Intoxication” means more than alcohol-poisoned, it can be “strong excitement or elation.” We can give or kill life in one fell word.
Lawn Love compared the 200 largest U.S. cities based on five categories and 17 metrics including access to diners, convenience stores, more bars and liquor stores, plus proximity stumbling home from the nearest drunk tank.
Frisco had the most coffee shops, bars and liquor stores per square mile, good food and Ubers, some drivers whom you can tip to drop you off the Golden Gate Bridge into bracing bay waters. Should you survive, or for that matter wish to, for an added fee they’ll resuscitate and haul you home.
Grand Rapids, the biggest metro area near Saugatuck, ranked 71st, just ahead of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., where coconuts fall on and conk you back to consciousness. Surprise, Ariz., fares less well, as does pecan-growing Macon, Ga., for pie-eyed whoopee. Better bang in those oases for booze bucks though.
I was reading a Senior Living supplement crammed with canned stories and air-brushed photos of geezer models like me sailing, playing tennis and croquet on our Hamptons lawns sloping down to 60-foot yachts docked with green lights on Long Island Sound, adoring wife licking lips as I checked latest markets.
Around us would lie not cross-bay interlopers like Jay Gatsby but display ads for hearing aids, estate planners, nursing and funeral homes, estate planners, nursing and funeral homes and cremations. I’ll take Pullman any day.
“Tuff Turf?” I’ll call back. “We have quackgrass, crack, grass in pots, grass that’s not pot … all you could hope to exterminate.” When they arrived, I’ll be outside the tavern calling my personal broker Warren Buffet:
“Warren. Sell Amazon, Google, Apple, SpaceX … not partial shares, my full ownerships. Put it all in P.T.”
“Yessir.”
The mole men pulled out their Rodinators to blast tunnels like Bill Murray did to kill gophers and golfers in the movie “Caddyshack.”
“Not the Pullman Links!” I cried.
“Pullman has a lynx?” Mole Man 1 asked. “We get cougars and bobcats sometimes.”
“Don’t forget QAnon invaders,” piped in Marjorie Taylor Greene, popping up from her hole.
“You’re here?” I asked. “I thought you were auditioning to be Donald Trump’s next vice president.”
“We can’t be too vigilant.”
Warren pulled up in his Yugo with Jeff Bezos, Larry Page/Sergei Brinn, Elon Musk and the late Steve Jobs crammed in back. “You put our money in this?” they cried. “Now we’re destitute.”
“Watch out,” I saidf. “You’re standing on a burrow.”
“I don’t see a burro,” Musk said.
“No one more transparent than asses and elephants in politics,” I said. “MTG, stand next to them.”
“BLAM!!” the Rodinator said.
“Got the check,” Zeke the Bartender said as the smoke and echoes let up. “Looks like rain comin’.”
From the sky fell Vicuna fibers, Gucci crocodile leather tatters, the white fur coife in MJT heckled Biden, Slurpee cup shards, more manna and Kansas farmsteads.
“’Tain’t fit out for man nor beast. ‘Least we still got the moles,” Zeke said.