NEW YORK, NY— Yas Queen or Dry Clean? Not unlike the nation, local gay bar patrons found themselves utterly divided on whether Liza Minelli had made a surprise appearance, or if it was just a heaping pile of fabulous coats. Frenzied gays reportedly yelled “slay!” at the motionless coat pile for several minutes, assuming Ms. Minelli was merely holding a dramatic pose. Volvika Cran, a bartender working the infamous Liza shift, maintains Ms. Minelli was not present.
Demystifying the incident, Cran explained that the coat check guy had quit, so patrons just threw their coats down. A furry black coat on top gave the pile a uniquely Liza-esque silhouette. When Cran told patrons they were shouting at a pile of their own coats and not Ms. Minelli, they drowned her out with a dubious slant rhyme chant of, “We’re wisa’- it’s Liza!”
Trenton Starr, a patron convinced the mound of effortlessly jazzy coats was indeed Ms. Minnelli, told investigators that he swears on his replica Cabaret bowler hat that he heard Ms. Minelli sing, ‘Day-o! Day-o! Daylight come and me want to go home.’”
Starr claims the spellbinding coat pile quivered as Ms. Minelli added, “See, my voice is fine darling, better than ever. Let me tell you about the first time I saw Desi Arnaz Jr. naked. The most magnificent member I’ve ever laid my little doe eyes on. Hootchie mama.”
As an NYU theater minor, Starr theorizes Minelli simply performed from within the coat pile’s confines as an elaborate theatrical ruse, and scrambled up an air duct to escape. Starr insists he’s an authority on impossible celebrity escapes, claiming he once operated a stage trap door for Lady Gaga & was also “in the car with Princess Diana.”
An enraged patron called the rhetoric of Liza-deniers unmitigated blasphemy. He claimed he’d never disrespect a living legend like that because he attended Judy Garland’s funeral twice & saw Madonna’s face in the burnt cinnamon-raisin toast that caused his apartment fire. Yanking at the exit door repeatedly, the irate patron screamed “where the feck is my coat” before realizing the door had to be pushed.
Ignoring the dubious, a group of loyal Liza-truthers sat cross-legged by the coat check for much of the night. They insisted they heard the gay icon cackle her way through a 25 minute story about the time she bummed a cigarette from Fred Astair in Atlantic City. However, bar owner Onyx Hankey noted, “That was probably our A/C unit rattling. I’ve been meaning to fix that.”
