A Hard-Boiled Gumshoe Walks Into A Bar

Hey there, pal, nice hat.
    It helps me deal with the sinister echoes of footsteps trailing me in a pitch-dark alley.
Sure, okay.
    You got no idea what it's like being me, walking the fine line between justice and depravity every day. Catching the glint of blued steel out of the corner of my eye.
Well, I am a bartender...
    I've seen the worst humanity has to offer, my friend, right here in the naked city. Makes it so a man can hardly sleep at night. Tell Pat his old buddy Jake Derringer is back.
Pat's been dead for forty years. I'm Harvey.
    You wouldn't kid a kidder? Pat's dead?
Yup.
   Forty years?
Uh-huh.
   Jeez... I knew I went on kind of a bender there after Trixie gave me the heave-ho, but I had no idea... This isn't 1956?
Not even close. 2010.
    Really? Tell me you got flying cars.
Not a one.
    Jet packs? Monorails? Dirigibles?
Don't even have death rays. TV's in color, though. See? Over the pool table?
    Big deal, so we get to see Sid Caesar as pasty as he is in real life. The future ain't what it was cracked up to be.
Kind of a let down to me too. We did beat Communism, though.
   Oooh... big fight? Planes, tanks, hydrogen bombs, all that?
No, they kind of did it themselves. Just closed up shop one day. And we've lost every war we've been in since you crawled inside the bottle. Except for Grenada.
   Damn. Makes me sad I ever sobered up, even for a little while. Got any matches back there, barkeep?
Sorry, there's no smoking in here.
   You gotta be kidding me.
City ordinance.
    But it's a freakin' bar...
I know. And trust me, you're not the first to complain. You can light up out on the terrace.
    There's a terrace? Dear God in Heaven and all the saints too. What has happened to my country? I start drinking in a man's USA back in 1956, and I wake up in nancy-ville 2010.
Got some century-old absinthe in back if you want to get blotto for the next year or so.
    Yeah. Set me up, Harvey.