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Hangout Review
Herzog is a Sketchy Asshole
at what was once my apartment in Chicago, IL
October 21, 2004
Yeah, this guy sucks. I’m not sure how he found my house, but suddenly, at about ten o’clock, my buzzer started fucking exploding. I hit the talk button and said, “What the hell?” To which I get, “Fucking open up! It’s Herzog!”
“Who?”
“Herzog! Head critic, Fran Magazine!”
“What?”
“C’mon, let me up! Please, I assure you, it‘s urgent!”
Against my better judgment, I let him in. Moments later, he appeared at my door, wearing a blue hat with earflaps, reeking of both bourbon and a contemporary-Caulfield vibe. He also wore dark sunglasses and a black scarf covered most of his face.
“Thanks man,” he said, as he entered my apartment and clearly started to scope the place. “Got any beer?”
“What are you doing here?” I asked the bastard.
“Team building, man. Team building.”
“Team building?”
“Yeah, team building. Sam thought it would be a good idea for the staff to get to know one another better.”
“Sam gave you my address?”
“Not exactly.”
“Well then ho-”
“Some beer,” he interjected, “please.”
I must have been on hosting autopilot, because I actually handed him what alcohol I had left in my fridge. This happened to be half of a magnum of Colt 45, which he seemed delighted to have at his disposal. He turned his back, brought his hand to his face and, lowering the scarf, took a large swig.
“Great!” he gasped, bringing the scarf back up over his nose and turning around. “Do you have any documentaries? I’ve got some weed!”
“Look, uh, Herzog, my wife is asleep, this really isn’t a good time to team build.”
“Does she partake?”
“Partake? In what?”
“The ethereal magic of the most mystical of nature’s botanistic outcroppings.”
“Huh?”
“Moon cabbage.”
“Moon cabbage?”
“Thee sensi.”
“What?”
“Fucking grass, man!”
At this point, my wife came out of our bedroom.
“Who the fuck is this?” she asked, clearly startled by the illusory drunk who had opened our fridge and begun digging through our fruit drawer.
“It’s Herzog. I don’t know what he’s doing here.”
“The guy who wrote that thing about pot and monkeys?” she asked, referring to his infantile review of Among the Wild Chimpanzees, that we’d read together on the website.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Pleased to meet you,” Herzog said, thrusting his hand at my wife. He had one of our apples in his other hand. “Do you have a knife and a ball point pen?”
“Sure, Herzog,” my wife said, heading for the silverware drawer. She was rather cheery in spite of the situation.
“Please, call me Tyrone.” he said.
“Look fellas, I’m going back to bed, can you keep it down?” she asked, handing Herzog his requested tools.
Unbelievable. She was going to stand for this shit? We hardly ever have visitors, and never ones with concealed identities and the whiff of bowery.
“Sure thing m’lady,” Herzog said, bowing like an ass, “we just have some civil team-building to do, nothing more.”
“Look, Tyrone,” I said.
“Herzog!” he barked.
“Can’t we do this some other time? I’ve got to work in the morning.”
“Oh, it’ll be fun!” my wife cooed. Fuck!
Out of misguided civility, I was resigned to re-watching a documentary on Nostradamus, while catching glimpses of this Herzog puffing his strange-smelling weed through both the apple-pipe he’d crafted, and the scarf that he kept over his face.
“You know,” he said, offering me the apple for the fourth time, “I’ve gone on a strict diet of Pound.”
“What, pound cake?” I asked, taking the mutilated fruit from him for the first time.
“No, you fool! Ezra. The poet. Friend and benefactor to Joyce! Keeper of the wordless wisdom!” These words were pouring out of his scarf laced with smoke.
I brought a match to the apple and inhaled. It tasted nothing like pot.
“What the fuck is this?” I asked between coughs.
“Well, I guess you’ll never know.” Herzog scoffed.
Things got a little hazy. As Herzog rallied on and on about how he won’t even look at magazines, let alone read them, I started nodding off. The last thing I heard him say was, “Thanks for everything.” My eyes were closed at this point, but I could tell he was hovering right above me.
When I woke up, it was morning. Our apartment was a wreck. There was a crumbling couch-cushion fort in the corner of the living room, and all of the furniture was tied together by speaker wire. Our dishes were piled on the floor in front of the fridge, the toilet was backed-up and the bathroom was flooded. On the kitchen counter, Herzog’s scarf was coiled around my digital camera. When I turned it on, I realized that he’d erased the memory card and left behind a haunting self-portrait. Next to his scarf, he’d also abandoned his “weed,” which was actually catnip. The man is clearly out of his mind. Not only are his reviews practically unreadable, but he is an alcoholic who smokes fucking catnip out of apples. So, I don’t know what else to say, other than to repeat the warning: Herzog is a sketchy asshole.
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