What The Falk

Just heard Pete Falk shuffled off this mortal coil. Great guy. Did a "Columbo" with him back in '76.

We were both single at the time, and decided to hit the discos. Most days, he was a mellow cat.

But, that night, he turned into a rampaging Hebrew King Kong. Grabbing skirts and buying rounds for the tables around us, his face contorted in a lopsided mask of ecstasy, like a starving carny on pay day.

After twirling and knocking over a nearby table, and apologizing for the mess, an actual gorilla appeared in a Hawaiian shirt and asked us to leave.

The pepper grinder I threw was pretty big. One of those brass suckers the size of a car jack. Didn't know what hit him.

While I propped the bouncer up in a chair, Pete grabbed the girl he had been dancing with, held his finger to her head, and screamed, "NOBODY MOVE!"

She cackled wildly, and he kept getting fringe from her dress caught in his mouth when he shouted.

The music was so loud, no one could hear a thing. I got up on our table and did an interpretive dance about the plight of the American Indian, while Pete threatened random people with his finger.

The girl he was clutching just kept laughing. She was probably on the same black beauties I'd dropped into his Jack and Coke earlier.

Don't remember much after that. Woke up, face down, on a fire escape a few blocks away, and the sun was coming up. Mouth tasted like an alligator's ass.

Pete was below me, asleep on the hood of a taxi cab, his arms splayed out like he was waiting for the Rapture. The engine was still running, all the doors were open, and there was no driver.

Can't think of any moral to this story. Oh, yeah.

Don't leave pepper grinders out when the kitchen's closed.

And disco sucks.
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