Buying Milk for Juliette Lewis

Do you ever stop for a second and wonder about the chain of events over the course of your life that’ve led you to one particular moment in time?

Happened to me recently — I was drinking in my kitchen with five high school friends/acquaintances I hadn’t seen since before I was cool. Cliques converged. I relived my worst 11th-grade nightmare.

Fast forward three or so months to Friday night, when I find myself leaning against a couch that smells like cheese in a Gainesville venue called, post-modernly, The Venue. It’s raining outside. The place next door is throwing a dayglow for white/white-clad students who A) wish they were older B) wish they could drink and C) are dressed for a Jim Jones style Kool-Aid bath, but will settle instead for sliming themselves with massive quantities of fluorescent paint.

So glad I was never 18.

The Venue is home for a night to Juliette Lewis & The Licks, who should not for a moment be confused for Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks on account of the former playing Joplin-meets-Ratt chick rock and the latter wallowing in post-Pavement guitar wankery.

Post Paint Boy/Not Juliette Lewis

Also, one has Juliette Lewis. IMDB = What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Cape Fear, Natural Born Killers and the orthographically challenged Kalifornia.

Lewis propels my Friday evening narrative on account of hiring a merch hand who’s friends with my friend Brittany. He’s a real nice bro. I get in for free. I sit on a couch that smells like three-day-old Kraft Mac and Cheddar.

Long story short, Juliette Lewis (IMDB= Gil Grape, NBK, Whip It, Wonder Years, Brad Pitt vanity vehicle Kalifornia) gets a pre-set craving for 2% milk and yellow American Spirits in a contradictory attempt to gain muscle mass/contract lung cancer. Merch friend gets the order; Brittany offers to brave the rain/impending alcohol buzz to seek out said post-concert staples (NO BROWN M&Ms, DAMMIT!); Brittany’s friend Alan and I tag along.

Yes, I’m two/three degrees of separation from Pitt, Johnny Depp, Robert De Niro, Scorsese and Kevin Arnold, among others.

Although the ensuing milk ‘n cigs hunt included nothing grander than chugging malt liquor in a parking lot, chatting up a gas station clerk, running into my friend Ben, checking out an attractive redhead, and clumsily dodging two sets of cops, I did feel quite the rush from my accomplice role in scoring groceries for American film starlet Juliette “Jules” Lewis. I’m sure she enjoyed her midnight lactose fix and thought about all the hard work that went into procuring her somewhat obscure brand of smokes. She prbly dropped Britt’s name in an early morning convo with bff Brad Pitt, too.

Lewis with Tyler Durden.

My sincerest thanks to the really nice merch guy who got me in (for free). You are a very nice/hard working guy.

Have you ever scored cigs for Juliette Lewis?

How many degrees are you from Johnny Depp/Winnie Cooper?

Is drinking Old English out of a bag in a Gainesville parking lot the real-life equivalent of famed American director Richard Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused”?

Would you ever name a music venue The Venue, or is it too obvious to be “ironic”?

Do random question lists make for a more engaging reader experience?

How do you rate JLewis’s turn as Ruby in Cold Creek Manor?

Have you ever done mushrooms/acid/hallucinogenic brownies?

This bro who’s watching his eco lecture without earbuds in the library — should I “confront” him?

Is it true that fratbros don’t have a soul/are possessed by Satan?

- Not a Bryan Holt post