I guess if you do not live in Los Angeles that this blog will be sort of nonplus for you, but what the fuck do I care, really? To the right you will see a picture of my sister, Gia, doing something I cannot explain in-between shows at the Viper Room last May.  Let me preface this blog post by saying that although I do not go to the Viper Room on the weekly, or even the monthly, as of late, I have had a trillion good times there.  Today, I read in the LA Times that stupid Harry Morton, best know for his Pink Taco franchise has bought the Viper Room and plans to franchise it also. In the case that you're currently unaware of exactly who Harry Morton is, his father owns and operates the Hardrock Hotel & Casino franchise. You know, that Morton family. If you still cannot remember who he is, he used to bang Lindsay Lohan two summers ago, and immediately after he ended things with her is when she turned into Spiraling out of Control Doll.

I have a trillion-and-one problems with this and not just because I am an elitist Angeleno asshole. Nor is it because I have decided that everything Harry Morton touches falls apart and then into and out of rehab. The Viper Room has become a staple in Los Angeles. A place you can consistently count on for being overpriced in general, with disgusting dive-bar attributes, live music shows that might not even been that great, but at least you know what you're getting into. Once it's franchised it will lose whatever mystique it has attained. It cannot be the "World Famous Viper Room" once you can visit it in Las Vegas, Scottsdale or somewhere in useless New Jersey. The best part of the Viper Room has always been going there and then bragging to your friends nowhere near Los Angeles about whatever went on fully knowing they cannot really grasp the scope of it because they do not have their own version.

The Viper Room is where I was drinking the first time I decided to go topless down Sunset Boulevard and one of the first places I realized that I could function in a sickening way during a blackout. I also super love a couple of the bartenders there and although the article says that management is not going to be changing in the L.A. location, this does not mean they won't overhaul the staff in some sort of shitty, sick way. Anyways, I like the way things are because I can hear about awesome shows and get into them for free because that is how I work things out, and if this sort of thing ceases to happen I'll probably kiss my trips to the Viper Room good-bye because it's not the only sub-par, live music playing venue in Los Angeles. It's just the only one River Phoenix dropped dead in front of.