The Diary of an Angry Bird

It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane. – Phillip K. Dick

The Abyss doesn't blink when it stares back.

I’m driving a few mixologists to the airport, and I drive past Arnie’s Party warehouse. I see a huge LCD sign lit up in the early morning light that shows grown men and women wearing poorly made, baggy Angry Birds costumes. The tagline almost causes me to swerve off the road:

“Get these angry birds costumes for your next angry birds party!”

Fire ants are crawling on the surface of my brain. The whole world is vibrating, and I feel like space and time are going to split ways and catapult myself and the rest of the universe into oblivion.

Get these costumes for your angry bird party? NO. We live in a world where it is not absurd for this sign to assume that I have already thrown an angry bird party and that I must have these costumes for my  N  E  X  T  Angry Bird party. I need these costumes so I can step my game up for what is, at the very least, the second angry bird party I have hosted.

This is real. It happened to me. This sign looked into me and said, “I know you’ve already attempted to throw an Angry Birds party. That party was a fucking farce. It’s time to move up to the big leagues and get Angry Birds costumes for next time. For next time. FOR NEXT TIME.”

My mixologists haven’t slept and are chatting boisterously, but I can’t hear them. I’m in another world entirely. This is the second time I have seen this sign in this context. I didn’t notice it the first time. Now it is standing between me and my mental stability, like a thug blocking me in an alleyway. “Going somewhere?” it asks, leering.

I can smell menthol cigarettes and badly madeirized sherry in the cabin of the truck, and the visions are crushing me like a cartoon piano being dropped on my head.

Can you see it?

A soldier in Afghanistan use a laser to designate a children’s hospital as a target for an angry bird predator drone strike. He lights up an Angry Bird cigarette as the drone flies overhead (painted like the red bird). It launches an Angry Bird Hellfire missile that causes half of the hospital to collapse. Hundreds of innocents are killed along with the target of interest, a heroin dealer who was selling the purest smack in the Arab world, in tiny little Angry Bird baggies. This is how the United States avoids the political ugliness of straight up assassinating people: by having drones do the killing that real humans used to. Politicians defend our use of drone attacks during a televised debate on The Angry Bird News Network. They wear tiny, carefully placed Angry Bird pins on their lapels.

On the other side of the world, on a happier note: Yoni Maltzman has an Angry Birds Bar Mitzvah in Brooklyn.  His parents served Angry Birds Chardonnay (from Brda in Solvenia, fermented with wild yeasts) and Angry Birds Berliner Weisse, (a special bottling from Kindl). He received and Angry Bird Mont Blanc and an angry Bird Rolex Submariner from his grandparents. His parents were somewhat wealthy from selling Angry Birds cellphone GPS receivers. They gave out Yarmulkes that said “The Bar Mitzvah of Yoni Maltzman 08.24.12” with different Angry Birds on them. You visited Brooklyn last month, and you found one of the Yarmulkes in the street.

I’m forced to go back to reality at work. I think I’m safe. We have a great night at the restaurant. We deck brush, we do all the closing sidework, and I leave. Dreaming of the impending pasta Tuesday.

I show up at Paulie’s on Tuesday morning. I say hi to all my friends, and out of the corner of my eye, I notice colorful new cookies in the cookie case. I’m not a huge fan of sugar cookies in general, but I love that Paulie’s cranks them out like crazy and always has some kind of design that has something to do with current events, usually a holiday. If I had to eat a sugar cookie, the only one I can imagine enjoying is from Paulie’s.

I look in the case. The cookies are Angry Birds. The blue one. The Green one. The red one. I feel like my jaw can’t drop hard enough. If my lower jaw just fell off, that would convey how the cookies made me feel. Paulie and The Birds have declared war on my sanity, and I can’t help but laugh, hard. During lunch I do my best to pretend that I don’t feel like the target of a massive Angry Birds conspiracy. Paulie’s is my oasis from the madness of everyday life and the service industry. And I’m slightly disturbed the Birds have found it.

Later, at a wine tasting, I ask a friend: What is your favorite Angry Bird? They answer immediately and sincerely, and I weigh the pros and cons of making a giant scene. I decide against it. I’m the one being unreasonable by freaking out about The Angry Birds, I tell myself.

Time passes, and I find myself sitting at the counter of Greenway coffee. I’m googling persimmons. Chef might do a persimmon dish, and even though I tasted one at the restaurant, I’m completely out of ideas for an interesting pairing. Sparkling rose just sounds too easy. I wish someone would make a persimmon lambic. Could I call Cantillon and beg them to make me a persimmon lambic? Nope, for a lot of reasons. I picture myself in the dining room of Oxheart:

“With your first course, the persimmon dish, we’re pouring Angry Birds lambic. This one is flavored like the red one, with notes of tart cherries, raspberries, red currants, lemon, and some sweet baking spices from barrel maturation. Please enjoy.”

One time a guest said, “I would just love to be a fly on the wall for when you and chef talk about how to do your pairings.” What I didn’t mention is how boring the scene would actually be. We exchange fewer words than usual when it comes to pairing. Mostly because chef trusts me to pair whatever I want, and he only really protests when he thinks what I’m doing is completely nuts. People will be angry if you have a pairing with no red wines in it, Vann. They will be angry birds. So I yield. He's usually right about these things, and is good at helping me reign myself in, wine pairing-wise.

I’m back at Paulie’s, and I’m drinking more wine, perhaps slightly overindulging. My friends and I are probably being slightly obnoxious. I’m glowering at the cookies. I remember that I have a wine tasting to go to at 10pm. It was 2pm at the time. Later that evening we’re finishing some Lillet rouge and soda, and I’m bummed because I want to do an aromatized wine pairing with Karen’s mousse cake, and this won’t do it justice.

I ask my friend to give me a ride to the tasting, which is just down the street. As a joke I sit on the hood of the car. She starts driving, and suddenly I’m possessed by the desire to ride on the hood of the car. I dig my hands into the cover of the hood and yell, “DRIVE”. The best thing that happened all weekend was her humoring me, and driving me to a very fancy Burgundy tasting on the hood of the car.

LCD Soundsystem’s “Losing My Edge” is playing in the car, and I love that goddamn song. It is all too easy to replace the lyrics with my own world:

I used to work in the wine store.

I had everything, before anyone.

I was there, drinking champagne with the masters in the lazy river of The Four Seasons at Los Colinas, for TEXSOM.

I was there, buying cowboy boots with Serge Hochar.

I was there, at the first Hospice de Beaune auction.

I was there, for the first Summer of Riesling. 

I was there, watching the forklift drop a pallet of Velvet Glove, and laughing psychotically.

I hear that you and your chef have sold your liquid nitrogen tanks, and bought a pacojet.

I hear that you and your chef have sold your pacojet, and bought liquid nitrogen tanks.

I hear everybody you know is more relevant than everybody that I know.

She’s doing a good job of braking gently, and I honestly wish she’d gun it. I wish she’d power slide out onto Montrose, and floor it. I wish she’d accelerate to over 100 miles an hour and slam on the brakes. I’m sure I’d be gruesomely killed, but I could experience the impossible dream of flight, of being an angry bird. I look up at the moon, see the trees whizzing past, and even though I feel a sense of peace, I am still nervous about what I’m going to pair with the persimmons. A sweet potato dish might even happen. I’m not sure, but if it does I’m moderately sure I could pull off a Gewurztraminer with it.

I picture the funeral. Justin Vann lived as he died: an Angry Bird full of wine. That would be the story of me. An open casket, my face painted like the yellow one, my favorite bird. The wake? An Angry Bird party. Obviously.

I wish Paulie would make scary cookies, like the poison skull and crossbones. Perhaps a cookie mushroom cloud. A cookie AK-47. How many bowls of Canestri alla fungi would I have to order to have the clout to request a cookie chainsaw, speckled with raspberry jam?

I wish I slept more.

I wish I knew what to do with the persimmons. I’ll figure it out when I taste the dish. Until then I will panic.

I wish I could talk about what things are really bothering me. But it doesn’t matter because I can’t do anything about them. I am expressing myself the only way I know how, given the circumstances. I am selling my turntables, and buying guitars. I am baring my soul the same way one might dump a pillowcase full of Halloween candy on the ground. I'm proud and happy initially, but soon I'm going to feel sick.

So tell me…

What’s your favorite Angry Bird?