Long Time

It has been a long time since I posted something, the biggest reason is that I am in Afghanistan fighting for freedom, defending the sovereignty of our great land and not taking prisoners.  Well, I am in Afghanistan.... and since the military doesn't feel my blog is worth their computer's time I find it hard to post things.  So I write them out and when I have a chance head down to a place that will let me access this site and throw the posts down.  I have a lot actually but not enough time to even put them here.

For some reason they think that my blog about the military is acceptable and that can be found at this link:

http://recruitingcommand.com/dravot/

"Rich Girls" The Virgins-The Virgins

I used to spend a decent amount of time in Miami for various reasons, living in North Florida, the real south, I could always find a few reasons to escape the calm and sometimes repressive culture embodied there.  Miami was a breath of fresh air.  Most of the times I was down there it was alone, I used to work in Key West all week then take the rental car up A1A to south beach, or I was with a woman.  The latter was always a problem.  I was never the type of man to stray while in a relationship but with all that eye candy around, at times it was difficult to keep your attention focused on your own personal version of sweets.  So one weekend, at this point totally single with zero prospects, my best friend and I, he being totally single and recently divorced, ventured down to do Miami right.  He had never set foot inside the city limits and was anxious from my stories of South American hotties, booze filled nights and smoking days on the beach and around the pool.

It didn't start out as planned.  It was raining and not in the usual south Florida, late afternoon way; it was torrential and all day.  So we drove out to the shops at Bal Harbor which may sound like some typeof suburban hell, and to Carpaccio for lunch.  Eating in a Mall is not usually my idea of fine cuisine and great atmosphere but here, it is.  The shops there are basically Madison Avenue and Caarpaccio is Nello, actually a recently closed down Madison Avenue establishment La Goulue has an outpost next door.  There's a lot of money, a lot of fashion and where those two reside there is always beautiful (while maybeshallow) looking women.  Within minutes of sitting down my friend's apprehensions were put to rest when we were seated to a table of South American women drinking Bellinis and dressed for Saturday night at one in the afternoon.

After we drove back to The Delano, a place that we for some reason couldn't pronounce and resorted to calling it Del-More as in the character who Rambo goes to visit and finds dead in the first Rambo First Blood, we went for a swim in the ocean even in the rain, until it was time to get ready for the night and head out.  The Delano at the time was the place to be and for good reason.  The lobby has thirty foot high ceilings, flowing curtains and applies the original Art Decco  architecture with a more modern style.  There's a few bars, couches and the like which in a few hours would be filled with beautiful people or at least those trying to be.  Coming down after changing "Rich Girls" was the first song I heard.  It was the year that it was released and probably all over the radio (do they play songs on the radio anymore?) but walking down and into the lobby, scoping the scene with the bass thumping in the background while Donald Cummings muttered "We walk around, pretending..." people started moving in slow motion, glamour was multiplied by an exponent of ten, in my mind I was ten pounds lighter and a thousand times richer.  Years later Heineken would bottle that feeling in their commercial with The Asteroids Galaxy Tour.

That was the first of many times and as Miami is, you either feel very cool or very uncool in that town, usually it depends on the amount of cash you have on you or the woman on your arm.  But that weekend we didn't have either.  We had a beat up old Range Rover and two boys that have been kinda beat up themselves over the years but when The Virgins came on, that bass, static guitar and I don't give a fuck what you think voice came on we were in the right and we were in the now.