CHAMPAGNE ROOM : A BRIEF EXPLANATION WHILE IN BRIEFS
You may wonder where the term comes from and you would be right to ask; it is a strange term. Is it a very niche wine cellar? A room reserved for notable celebrations like birthdays and weddings? A room where the floor is sticky underfoot but somehow still classy? As if the usual denizens had the financial solvency and disregard for fine bubbly such that they could spill it about their open-toed heels and designer crocodile skin shoes with nary a thought.
Wrong on all counts.
I first heard the term in 1999. Y2K was the buzzword du jour. Korn and Limp Bizkit dominated high school driver car radios. Woodstock 99 was setting fires to trucks and swimming in human waste. And in amongst the action comedian Chris Rock came out with a little number called “No Sex”. The chorus of the this little piece (to my memory) was “there is no sex in the champagne room”. Young though I may have been and naive to boot, especially in the ways of adult playtime, I came to realize that the champagne room was basically the back room, the VIP suite, the private area ;) of a strip club. The little nook where you can invite a dancer to…well…dance more one on one if you will.
Now why did Chris Rock write this song with this chorus? I have no idea. Was he reciting a mantra to himself? Lecturing a friend? Was he amidst a nasty divorce? Who’s to know (probably Wikipedia but that’ll really make the song lose its mystique for me so I won’t check). All the same the song with its chorus and the weight of its meaning were not lost on my burgeoning hormone-soaked brain cells.
So fast forward years…decades even and having gone through heart break and separation and some (moderate) growing up I was trying to think of a header for my new little corner of the internet. I had been noted by several kind and complimentary friends over the years that my sometimes lengthy opinion pieces on Facebook were simultaneously funny / slightly mad / and completely ridden with the impression that had I said what was written it would have been most appropriately presented as a yelled manifesto on a street corner while clutching a sign high above my diminutive stature that read “BURN IT ALL FOR THE END IS NIGH AND THE WORLD MUST MUST BE CLEANSED”. So “Diatribe” was definitely going to be the brand of delivery but where would I, a homely single middle aged bald man, most hilariously lose his proverbial shit to start such a diatribe? The street corner mentioned above was too cliché. Too loaded with the image of a filth-covered man standing next to a grocery cart full of empty cans (all Red Bill Zero Sugars and White Monsters) and an old radio perched atop crackling static only he could hear the secret messages through. No, that would not do. Too close to the truth. It occurred to me that Chris Rock’s colloquial Champagne Room would be the perfect venue to deflect questions of my imminent mental implosion. A place of supposed calm and intimate (although it is fake intimacy) closeness. A place supposedly approached, enshrouded, and enjoyed in hushed tones. What better place to start screaming my manifestos, opinions, conspiracies, and hallucinations. Really there could be no better. An exotic dancer astride my inadequately short thighs. Gyrating while plugging her ears as I continue some nonsensical tirade. Glitter on my cheeks from her…well you get the idea.
I am undoubtedly repeating brighter, funnier, and more respectable intellects when I say that comedy can be derived from juxtaposition and this was comedy to me. Now will you, dear reader, find this amusing? Interesting? To be a strange cry for help? Maybe all three? I can not say.
But there it is. My little explanation for my strange website header. Hope you enjoy your visit and please remember tip your dancers XOXO.
