Wastin’ away again in Martyritalville

That Jimmy Buffet actually lived in the west village and wore black artificial fingernails at home doesn’t make it any less appropriate that he died in view of Cape Canaveral, or that he did so in the way he did. Indeed, this was surely the hand of fate doing what it could to erase all the incongruities that might have made his ghost just another dead American liar.

From the outside, through the glare and over the parking lot, the room was cinder block and stucco, but it was all decked out inside with very thin wood panels. An overflowing ashtray, yellowing aluminum shades – the place a tequila hangover paradise. Oh, and a ceiling fan, one that always went thumba thumba thumpa in a real slow way, a merry-go-round for small flies and dead flies, dust-banks for the windward edges.

Where the refrigerator might have gone in a god-fearing abode squats a restaurant-sized margarita machine, slushing contendedly that famous martyritaville anecdote.

Florida’s huntable species ( + a few not-so-legal trophies ) shove their taxidermied heads through wooden collars, from squirrel to white-tail. Favorites wear real-deal leis (one boar’s got a skipper’s hat!), but some of the kinda cool ones just have garish plastic garlands. A mourning dove and alligator (uhoh! here comes the warden…) have LED red eyes; it’s somethin’ to strum the ukele to! So these things cover the walls, not lined up, just all over the walls. Except where there’s a roaring Styrofoam fireplace (no, not real, of course…plasma screen and speakers) that roars away under a mantle all gilded and sculpted with flowers, cherubs, unicorns, and lions. On which perches a wall-unit that sends forth violent blue northers so intense that one must often huddle by that fireplace with some cocoa and a space heater just to not switch to vodka and “boga nyet, tovarisch!”.

Opening a cabinet door reveals some mystery: it’s rubber-sealed, so there’s suction in opening it (a little yank, here); out gushes condensing air (and there’s a hiss); eventually the contents appear, they’re just bulging bags from McDonalds, Long John Silvers, and one stack of personal-sized boxes from PizzaHut. It’s a pretty big cabinet. The door actually opens down. It’s kind of like opening a tailgate. Anyway, they’re all there, even with really cold napkins and plastic utensils. Who cares, the whole bag goes in the microwave in the end. Still, the whole thing is pretty elaborate. Making a cabinet into a freezer? That takes bank!

But Jimmy Buffet made that! Oh, did he ever. And that was obvious in everything; it looked crappy enough, but it had to’ve cost boatloads. That’s the thing, all these details…I mean, you walk in, that’s not what you first see at all, these things are after that. After you settle down, start to ask questions, start making the history. No, the first thing grabs you right’way, and you have no choice at all but to just stand there staring for awhile.

At first it looked like a sham, like a space-alien movie set. That’s what I first thought, so I guffawed, not one to be taken in like that. But it wasn’t that he was covered in iridescent pink mold that was eating out his eyeballs or something. No, no, no, it was cotton candy. Which is weird (yeah, but I only know ‘cause I tasted it..that’s prolly weirder). But he was absolutely covered in the stuff, and it was deep red around his mouth (‘cause he’d been gurgling saliva); it was bloody ‘round his heart. Anyway, you wouldn’t’ve recognized him through this at all unless you knew what you were looking for; he was so wrapped up in it. Poking out through all this fuzz was a horn (judging by it’s size from a bighorn sheep). I put my ear to its open end, and I heard the ocean. Or maybe it was what a rocket sounds like taking off. The place gives many understandings, and I like that. It’s why I’m here.