Don't Call It A Comeback

I'm sorry I haven't posted here in forever x 1000.

There, that should do it for the niceties. On to the story, and this one's lovely.

As has been mentioned elsewhere at Crooked Straight, I flew out to L.A. on March 1st for a business conference at the Westin Bonaventure on Figueroa. However, the contest didn't start until Sunday, March 2, so I had some time to parlay with my boys the Hero and Franchise.

You all know the Hero, aka Kev, aka the proprietor of this site. He and I go back eight or nine years, although we've only ever kicked it a few times. Same timeline and description goes for Franchise, except for one major distinction: he's paid.

No, let me correct that. He's PAID. He makes a modest six figures at the day gig, but is the Rain Man of gambling. He puts money on women's basketball, for God's sake. At least, he used to. Due to his getting engaged on New Year's, he had to end the beautiful relationship he'd forged with his bookie. To give you an idea of how well he does, he tells me that he thinks he'll close the book on 2007 with about $8 million worth of action. And he's not kidding.

To the story. Franch and his lady pick me up at LAX just after lunch Saturday. We stop off at a Mexican joint in Santa Monica to eat, where I give Kev a call to see if he's still down to kick it that night. Surprise of surprises, he's at Hollywood Park. But he says he's still in.

We continue on to the recently built Franchise estate in Valencia. I get a house and neighborhood tour and we start formulating plans for the evening. Franch's stepsister says she knows the doorman at every club in Hollywood so we can get in anywhere. However, she's a world-class flake, according to Franch, so we also develop a backup plan.

He has a buddy who has a buddy who's doing promotion for Opera that night. Opera was THE place to be last fall - you probably saw pics of celebrity X walking out of there at some point. It's since cooled a bit, but it's still a tough ticket. Franch gets on the phone with the promoter and starts negotiations to get the crew in.

(Quick aside for my non-LA peoples: The contradiction of LA clubs for guys is that, generally speaking, you need to have a 3:1 girl-to-guy ratio to get in the door cold, which is kind of silly cuz most guys go to the club to MEET girls. If I had three club-level chicks in my entourage, we wouldn't be going to the club, we'd be going to a hot tub. But I digress.)

We couldn't guarantee the ratio in our crew, so Franch says "F**k it" and gets a table. Price tag: $800. Tack on taxes, mandatory tip, etc., and you can just call it a clean G. Your boy TJ doesn't have this kind of cake in pocket to pick up his share, but Franch doesn't care; that's how he rolls. That's why he's one of the five coolest people I know on this planet, and I'm not even exaggerating.

So we get the eight-person crew lined up - me, Franch, his lady, Kev, Stepsis, Stepsis' man and Stepsis' friend and a variable in case one of Franch's boys makes it. We roll six-deep to the club and meet Kev there. This will be an important fact to remember later.

Franch drops the promoter's name at the door and in we go. We had a great table: in the back but facing the front right off a well-trafficked area, with only one other table next to us. But that wasn't what made it great. It was the bottle of Grey Goose and the bottle of Belvedere sitting on it that did the trick. The waitress starts pouring drinks - I went with a screwdriver - and away we go.

(Kev, who isn't as much of a drinker as a smoker, initially demurred, opting to go with a Rockstar energy drink. After I pestered the hell out of him for it, he admitted he was afraid of the "Asian glow." Said his face gets bright red when he gets drunk. I pointed out we were in a club and the lighting was so low I couldn't even tell he WAS Asian. So he got a vodka/cran. I'm such a good friend.)

The club starts filling as the bottles start emptying. The DJ was playing Top 40 and easy hip hop, but every once in a while threw a curveball. At one point I looked at Kev and said, "Is he playing 'Pistolgrip Pump'?" I decided then that I liked the DJ.

The night in the club, all in all, wasn't terribly out of whack. Kev quickly got into the alcoholic steez; less than an hour after the first drink he was proposing tequila shots. So much for the Asian glow fear. Meanwhile, Franch is ordering rounds of purple hooters and putting them on his tab.

Women-watching was pretty good. Definitely some bangers. Stepsis had a couple of fly homegirls show up with some tagalong boyfriends who looked like early cuts from the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog tryouts. (Franch and Kev were pulling the blazer with a T-shirt and jeans look while I rocked a Sean John buttondown. Always keeping it real.)

Franch was anchored to the table with his lady - which wasn't a bad thing, as he started getting lap dances from her at some point - so Kev and I decided to peruse our options. This meant wandering the floor for a bit and not seeing anything tremendously exciting and then ending up at a bar for shots. I wanted to take it easy because I had the conference in the morning and we were already guzzling vodka. So we did stuff like Washington apples and kamizazes. Nothing insane.

But the rounds of shots kept coming and in no time we was feelin' alright. Pretty soon we were clowning other patrons, wondering if boobs were fake or real and staring at the waitress' bodacious ass whenever she came on a refilling mission. Kev even made friends with the busboy. If memory serves, he tipped him a $20.

During one foray, a chick walked by Kev and bumped into him, spilling his drink all over his hand. He was like, "WTF," turned and stared at her with the same face Charlie Murphy had after Rick James slapped him. I didn't know if I should laugh or hold him back. Luckily, he didn't go Jet Li on her and the night continued.

Fast forward to the end of the night. About 15 minutes before close, Franch rounds up the troops to roll. Kev demands to stay for ... I don't know why. But he wouldn't leave, and he wanted me to stay with him. I'm like, "Yo, I gotta go to Franch's crib, man."

"I'LL DRIVE YOU!" he says, punctuating his declaration with a swaying motion as he tried to recover his balance. When I tell him he doesn't know how to get there, he thunders back, "YES I DO!" Keep in mind Franch has only been living there like three months. Hell, Franch doesn't know where he lives.

So we leave Kev and roll out. Pretty soon, it's just me, Franch and his lady. The ride home was marked by a quick stopoff in a dark portion of the highway so me and Franch could take what we both agreed was the best piss of our lives. She mocked us from the car and said we were disgusting ... but 30 seconds later was squatting on the side of the road herself. This is why men are superior in the gender dynamic.

We stop at a Del Taco, the only thing open, for grub. This is when my phone buzzes with a text message from Kev that I will copy verbatim here, so pardon the language:

"Fycjinf agggot bitch honmo hoe ass cab driver"

So we figured he was OK.

Fast forward again to the next day. Franch drops me off at the hotel, I go to my room to start getting ready for the opening luncheon, and my phone buzzes again. This time it's Franchise. He's laughing and telling me Kev is on the TMZ Web site. I don't quite understand what he's saying, but see for yourself (he's the spectator on the cell phone in the black blazer in the first 15 seconds or so):

http://www.tmz.com/tmz_fight_video?titleid=1441108981

When I text Kev about it, he responds, "Ha ha very funny." After 10 minutes, he hits me back: "You weren't serious right".

Apparently he doesn't remember the fight, the cab ride home or much of anything at the end of the night. He'd even texted me about 11 am Sunday saying he was still drunk.

Final tally for the night: two empty bottles of top-shelf vodka, at least eight rounds of shots, no chicks and one extremely intoxicated half-Asian man caught by the paparazzi.

Only in L.A., y'all.