What I Learned This Summer (2013)

You know the drill.

This is the fourth one of these posts that I’ve done in the past five years. If two is a coincidence and three is a trend, then four is definitely a standard. Which is ironic, since I’ve often been accused of not having standards. *cough* Moving on…

I love summer, and since my childhood I’ve worshipped it with a reverence typically reserved for favorite grandmothers. Ice cream truck jingles, pickup baseball games, and firecrackers started the romance in my days of innocence. Pool bars, bikinis, and outdoor happy hours have kept the flame alive after all of these years. For me, summer air carries a certain magic with it, be it real or imagined.

My list of memories from the Summer of 2013 feels a little less extensive than in years past (maybe that’s a blessing in disguise, though, given how long some of those posts have been). That may be due to shoddy note-taking (as always); or, maybe, it’s due to fewer shenanigans being had. Working 50 hours a week has worn me down over the past year, and as a result most Friday nights I’m too drained to get turnt up at the bars. I hate it—it’s like I’m being force-fed adulthood—but, unless I hit the lotto or marry a beautiful heiress, that’s life.

So, with no further delay (since it’s, you know, November December January February March [fight me]), and in no particular order, here are my lessons from the physically painful, mentally exhausting, emotionally dulling summer days of 2013 that I would gladly relive if given the chance.

• If a drunk friend runs away from you, let him go; if he comes back, it was meant to be. If he doesn’t…at least you won’t need staples in your leg. Yup. June 22, 2013 will go down in history as the dumbest day of my life. Well…top-5. Who would’ve thought going to a country concert tailgate wouldn’t be the stupidest thing I did that day?
  
  
• Parents always know when you’re being stupid. I limped into my mom’s house the day after the accident, expecting hysterics and motherly lectures. Instead, she reacted with a measured, cool demeanor, and calmly told me she’d dreamt the night before that I was in the hospital. That’s some ESP for your ass. At the same exact moment I was laid up in a hospital bed—in the same ER room, coincidentally, that she’d been in a little over a year before that—getting 16 staples put in my leg, she was having a dream about me being in the hospital. Our bond is tight.
  
  
• Stupidity is expensive. The bills for the ER visit and multiple follow-up doctor appointments were not cool. Perhaps worse, though, was buying more medical tape and gauze bandages every week. Somewhere out there is a mid-level manager at Johnson & Johnson who should shake my hand for sending his or her kid to college.
  
  
• There’s something scarier than 16 staples in your leg: Sobriety. My leg became infected during the recovery period. That meant antibiotics. That meant two weeks of July spent sober, praying PowerBall and modern science would rescue me with an infection-fighting rum that could only be found on a tropical beach populated by beautiful, sexually-adventurous women.
  
  
• Finding the right party means making tough decisions. Armo hosted a pool party in mid-August, but unfortunately it didn’t command the same attendance demographics (see: lots of morally bankrupt people, many of them in bikinis) that similar parties have in the past. Alex suggested, as the night set in, that we all head for life rafts and paddle back to Shadyside, where the season’s third and final “Jam on Walnut” was roaring to life. Armo refused to leave his place, vowing to go down with the ship. He’s a valiant captain. At least, that’s the thought I had as I fastened my life preserver seatbelt.
  
  
• When you’re friends with someone, there’s usually a pretty good reason for it. Alex, Tony, and I were the three mutineers that night. As we walked from her place to Shadyside Saloon, Alex tripped over the uneven sidewalk ahead of me. I began chuckling—fully intending to grow it into a self-righteous LOL—when I felt myself stumbling over the very same sidewalk bump. Just that quickly, my feelings of superiority had turned into dejected realism. As I stopped and collected my shattered self-worth, I heard Tony trip over the bump.
  
  We’re idiots.
  
  
• Only a drunk idiot puts a drunk idiot in charge of pizza. After the bars closed that night, we grabbed a couple of pies at S. Aiken Bar and Grille. For reasons unbeknownst to any of us once the sober hours arrived, I was given the responsibility of carrying the pizzas from there to my apartment. Alex instructed me not to eat any until we got to our destination; that rule might’ve held some weight with someone who hadn’t been drinking for most of the day, but…#drunchies. We weren’t even a quarter of the way to my place when she and Tony turned around to find me with sauce and cheese all over my face.
  
  
• What some call binge drinking, I call efficient packing. Each of the summer’s big three holidays—Memorial Day Weekend (MDW), Fourth of July, and Labor Day Weekend (LDW)—saw my friends and I squeeze three or more days full of crazy into one small calendar entry. As natural as such mini-binges have been over the past 15 or so years of my life, it took until just now for me to realize that those were the only three-day calendar entries of the summer. Far from being a symptom of alcoholic dependencies, those multiday adventures were actually a symptom of adulthood. We’ve found ourselves clinging ever-so-tightly to the windows of liberty shared by our calendars as we’ve grown older (especially as, in turn, those windows have grown increasingly-rare). It’s the life of busy adults trying to get the most out of the infrequent times when they were free from responsibilities.
  
  

• Responsibilities are Father Time’s rapey minions. Like many people, I often daydream of winning a huge PowerBall lotto payout. But I’ve come to realize that it’s not necessarily the financial freedom that fuels those fantasies, it’s the freedom itself. No alarm clocks, no project deadlines. No bosses. Just living life as it comes to you each day.
  
  
• Not working can be hard work. Of those three holiday weekends, LDW was arguably the least hedonistic. But it might still have been the shortest on sleep.
  
  We kicked it off with the Oddball Comedy Festival that Friday. TD, Boy Toy, Armo, Weatherman, and several others joined me in some parking lot imbibing (read: pounding beers like they were cheap sluts earning rent money) in the summer sunshine, followed by throwing back tallboys of Heineken inside the First Niagra Pavilion grounds in the summer moonlight. Dave Chappelle, Hannibal Burress, Kristen Schaal, and everyone else killed it, while I killed every beer and shot that came within 10 feet of me.
  
  
• Following your dreams is scary as shit. And I haven’t even done it. But I’ve stood at the edge of the cliff, looking down at the ground below, and wondered how I could ever fly above it. I have endless respect for those who’ve taken that step forward. I pray I man up and follow you soon, before it’s too late.
  
  
• When you do make a bold decision, don’t half-ass it. In July TD and I, out of the clear blue sky, decided to go on a bar crawl—after a whiskey distillery tour. And when we come at you, we come hard. (Wait…)
  
  
• Life is what you make it. Seriously, we wrecked shop that day. Nine bars. Nine bars AND A WHISKEY DISTILLERY. And we never really broke a sweat. In fact, all of us handled ourselves like all-stars the entire Fourth of July weekend, going strong four days straight. That was one of those moments where you find yourself smiling at all that just took place, as you lay on your couch in agony on Sunday afternoon.
  
  
• LDW is officially fantasy football Christmas. Saturday of LDW—as is tradition—featured the annual W&J draft at Armo’s house. It was one of two that I attended that weekend. Finn, Chief, Esq, BBB, Tony, our friend Keith, and others met to bust each other’s balls and select fantasy teams over lots of pizza and lots of beer. I don’t know if it’s due to football having dominated that weekend for numerous years now, but hearing “LDW” just triggers images of the game in my head, like saying “Fox News” makes you picture a monkey throwing its own shit at a wall.
  
  
• The better you are at something, the more you suffer for your art. This year saw me manage six fantasy football teams of my own, and consult two of my friends’ teams. Every godforsaken day from mid-August through the end of December saw me dividing up the free time I don’t have between fantasy research, eight leagues, and the CS pages. Who needs a love life?
  
  
• Love lives are second-class citizens in a world that’s home to fantasy football. One of those friends who employed me as a consultant was Dupa. He flew into Pittsburgh late on the Saturday night of LDW for his league’s draft, which would be held Sunday afternoon. By early Sunday evening, he was on a plane headed back to Houston.
  
  His girlfriend lives here in Pittsburgh. He didn’t visit her during the approximately 20 hours he was here. …She was not happy.
  
  
• Getting drunk with your homies is like riding a bike. On his one night in town, Dupa dialed the knob to “full turnt.” He drank himself silly on the plane, and then led Tony and me to Shady Grove straight from the airport. In the 20 minutes after we walked through the doors, we consumed a round of Long Islands, a round of Jager Bombs, and a round of Heinekens. By the end of the night I was taking pictures of Dupa sitting alone on a city bench with his arm around a pizza, as he made sex faces at it.
  
  
• Fuck fire hose fittings. Seriously. To this day I feel myself get nervous and twitchy each and every time I walk near a fitting sticking out of a wall or a hydrant on the sidewalk.
  
  
• I don’t know how Pak’s wife does it. For reasons only known to divinities of the universe, I spent three consecutive weekends hanging out with Pak in Shadyside. Week 1 was two homies wanting to drunk; Week 2 was the summer’s second Jam on Walnut; and Week 3 was the annual kickball tournament that turns my friends into booze zombies. Safe to say, Mrs. Pak hated me as much as I hated Pak by the end of that stretch.
  
  
• It’s possible to be a bigger drunken spectacle than Pak. The second of those weeks, the Jam, found Tony in his drunkest form. Pregaming at my place, drinking beers on Walnut St., and downing shots and drinks at Shady Grove did in the homie, who was an irrationally-angry mess—a.k.a. “full-on Irish”—by midnight.
  
  Realizing that his night had reached its peak, I walked him home. Along the way, we passed various random bands of revelers strolling through the neighborhood. And each time someone in one of those clusters would raise their voice in excitement over whatever it was that they were discussing, Tony’s reaction was to accuse them of talking shit on him, and to attempt to dart in their direction.
  
  
• With age comes experience…and shame. The following week—that of the kickball tourney after party—Tony balked at Pak’s and my suggestions that he come catch up with us. He was worried that most of Shadyside would remember him as the blotto fool he had been the previous week. He finally relented when I reminded him that all of the people that had seen him be a drunken asshole that night were, themselves, drunken assholes that night.
  
  
• Fate is a woman. Related: Women are cruel. The postgame partying after the kickball tourney saw some wild sights, including our girl Liz expressin’ herself on the wall at Mario’s East Side. The star of the night, though, was Armo.
  
  It’s rare that we get the Italian Stallion to venture outside the five-mile radius encircling his house (as evidenced by the fifth bullet point of this post); his average is about once a year. On this uncommon night, he met a cute blonde girl at Grove, who talked him up for most of the night. Keith and I watched from nearby barstools, sipping our beers like proud parents. At close, her friends pulled her in the opposite direction from the one our collection was headed in, so Armo and blondie did the whole huddle-on-the-sidewalk-away-from-your-friends-while-exchanging-phone-numbers ceremony. She then made him a tongue-wrestling practice dummy in front of their friends and the world.
  
  
  That Monday he texted her to see if there were flames to fan. She mentioned that she has a boyfriend. A boyfriend with whom she lives. Armo considered that maybe once-a-year was too often to venture out into the world.

The Summer of 2013 may have turned into November December January February March [fight me] as quickly as it appeared, but we’ll always have the memories.

…And the scars.

MDW 13

“[Jay Swag] was obliterated. [Boy Toy] only had one beer. [MoPaddle] and [“J-Cray”] were hurting. Alex’s parents are pretty cool.”

And with that, TJ summed up his Memorial Day barbecue.

I could turn this into a lecture as to why you don’t plan parties on the Monday of Memorial Day Weekend when everyone there has to be at work on Tuesday morning, but I think the lesson’s pretty clear. The very fact that he had to tell me about the party via email on Tuesday says it all. I was involved in a deep catch-up nap on my couch for much of Monday afternoon, after 60+ hours spent alternating between inebriated and hungover states.


Friday

We gathered at TD and Boy Toy’s home in Mt. Washington for the Penguins’ playoff game. TD and her crew had been drinking for most of the day, so by the time I walked through the door with two six-packs of Goose Island, drunk people were rolling back and forth between the kitchen and living room like a wave motion machine. When you add in that the day was also Alex’s birthday, you have a recipe for reckless boozing—and my crew is Gordon Ramsey when handed that recipe.

• I could barely fit my six-packs into the fridge, which was packed with Miller Lite, Miller High Life, and other various beers of low pedigree. And then Tony rolled in around the start of the second period with a case of Hoegaarden. Almost all of that beer was gone by the next morning.
• It occurred to me that Tony and I were the two most sophisticated drinkers at that party. And that is a thought I never thought I’d think.
• “Under The Porch” (UTP) christened Tyler Kennedy “Sniper Pig.” Which means nothing to you if you’re not a hockey fan, and everything to you if you are a hockey fan.
• Swag insisted on feeding people shots of Jacquin’s Blackberry Brandy. The crowd was underwhelmed.
• Alex once again proved herself to be a woman who isn’t afraid to try new things.
• Shots, shots, and more shots. Holy shit was there a lot of shots being done. And TD was the ringleader, using them as a cure-all. It’s your birthday today? Let’s do a shot! Your birthday falls sometime in 2013? Shot? Oh, you’re feeling tired? Wanna do a shot? Pens just won the series! Do a shot bitches! Feel like calling it a night? How about a shot? Everyone thinks you’re racist? A shot’ll make you feel better!
• I was only half kidding about that last one. While some of us watched a Kevin Hart clip, MoPaddle leaned over to me and whispered, “I just don’t get Black comedy!” Of course, in her hammered state, her whisper was actually a normal-decibel’d exclamation, and UTP picked up on it right away, nearly spitting out beer and stammering, “Whaaa?!?”
• In her defense, though, MoPaddle prefers the comic stylings of Kevin Nealon.
• …That wasn’t a joke.
• I passed out on an air mattress in the freezing spare bedroom next to our friend “Marty”. I can feel 100% secure in his and my heterosexuality, since we didn’t wake up snuggling for warmth.
• …Instead I used a bath towel I found in a bathroom closet.

Saturday

I awoke on an air mattress, shivering under a bath towel with a throbbing headache. A great start to any day, really.

Saturday was actually the day I’d been looking forward to all week. Alex and I had made plans to have a Shadyside night. Perfect temps, my homegirl and her sis, dozens more friends, and my home turf on the Saturday night of MDW—what could go wrong?

• …Oh yeah, hangovers from getting ridiculously wasted on Friday night, that’s what. Saturday was a 10-year war with my hangover. We each won battles, but I won the war by still making it out that night. Tony, TD, and others weren’t so lucky.
• I dragged myself to Shady Grove to meet up with Alex, her little sister (“Bedazzle”), Alex’s girl Em, and Shannon.
• …And Shan eventually checked out early. My favorite Irish lass, victimized. Friday night was a mother.
• I drank a gin & tonic, and realized it wasn’t going to fix me. Gin & Silver Edition Red Bull doubles are now a thing. You’re welcome.
• We learned that Bedazzle has a wild crew of her own in West Virginia. Including one friend who unabashedly turned an “I’m drunk and going to piss on your deck in front of you,” into an “I’m drunk and going to go ahead and follow through with a deuce. On your deck. IN. FRONT. OF. YOU.”
• …that friend was a female.
• This line from Bedazzle: “I guess some people think it’s a big deal to take a shit on a deck…”
• A sexy blonde girl with multiple visible tattoos began dancing—still seated on her barstool—when “Crank That” started playing. Yeah, I don’t know either why that sentence didn’t start, “My new bride began dancing…”
• I taught the bartender, our boy Greg, how to make a Fitzgerald. You’d think that would’ve qualified me for free drinks the rest of the night, but nnooooooo…
  

Sunday

My alarm went off at 9:30 a.m.; I chucked a pillow at it.

TD and Boy Toy picked this fine morning to move most of their belongings to their new townhouse, and several of us kindly lent a helping hand, out of the goodness of our hearts. And for beer. …And pizza.

At least the beer was Victory Hop Devil. That was just the day’s warm up activity, though—something to get the blood pumping. The second half of Sunday was earmarked for drinking faces off in the South Side on a bar crawl that would celebrate the start of Skeets’ 29th year. When I left everyone at the old Casa de T-Toy around 3:30 p.m., my immediate plans were getting cleaned up and navigating my way to my mother’s for dinner. Their immediate plans: BOOZE. (Don’t get ahead of me here…)

• I caught up with everyone at OTB in the sidewalk seating area around 9 p.m. The scene I walked into: Skeets was wobbly, but standing; TD, MoPaddle, and J-Cray were crushed; Swag was nearing Swag Montana territory, and was so invested in a conversation with some guy I’d never met before that he barely noticed my arrival; our girl “Special K”, Mitch Canada, Tony, Marty, and UTP were in varying degrees of “functional”, and were herders keeping the cattle on the ranch.
• Missing-in-action was TD’s significant other. Tony explained that Boy Toy had been playing beer pong at Belle and Finger Bang’s house, and arrived at the birthday crawl’s first stop completely shitfaced. So much so, in fact, that he had to be driven back home shortly thereafter, and threw up all over the car of the friend taking him there.
• J-Cray was so wound up that she was in full-on molester mode, smacking my ass and dancing her booty on me anytime I turned my head. I felt so cheap.
• TD was on a mission—a mission to remove panties. It’s well known that my little sister from another mother isn’t a fan of wearing skivvies, and something inspired her that night to crusade against any other woman who didn’t adhere to her religion. One-by-one she led Skeets, MoPaddle, and J-Cray to the women’s room and ordered them to remove their drawers. After Cray surrendered her panties, the little blonde pantyjacker threw the captured underwear straight into the garbage.
• Her crusade ended, however, with Special K, who fought to keep her panties on no matter how much I loudly TD protested.
• We moved on to Cupka's…with a quick stop to take pictures in front of Chinese So Relax Massage, first. Because why not?
• By now the mystery guy to whom Swag had been talking had been revealed to be Belle and Bang’s neighbor. And homie was going through some things. Tony happened to make a trip to the men’s room at the same time as “Neighbor”; while finishing up at the urinal, Tony said to him, “You know, there’s nothing quite like taking a piss when you really have to go.” Neighbor, who was at the sink washing his hands, paused in thought for a moment. “Yeah,” he replied, “…This definitely isn’t where I pictured myself being at this point in my life,” and walked out.
• This being the height of the NHL postseason, some of the guys—myself included—had been growing playoff beards. TD informed me that J-Cray and MoPaddle, wanting to participate as well, had been growing “playoff bushes.”
• Yes, I gagged a little, too.
• TD’s buddy Tom stopped by. She told him that she’d made three girls remove their underwear that night. Tom’s response: “Teach me your ways…”
• While sitting on the patio talking, I heard a crash and looked up to see Neighbor rolling on the ground next to an overturned chair. He was helped to his feet, and advised to cab it home while we walked off down Carson St. Rumor has it Bang came and got him—that has yet to be substantiated, but may very well have happened. There’s also a rumor that she took advantage of him in his physically-and-emotionally-weakened state. That also has yet to be substantiated, but is just as believable.
• When Tom went in to pay his tab, he was told that Neighbor had taken a similar tumble inside Cupkas, prior to doing so on the patio.
• We were headed towards Rumshakers, but given the distance, we stopped at Mullen's On Carson along the way. A regular seated across the bar thought I was pimping, because I had Cray, TD, MoPaddle, and Skeets all around me at the bar. I was tempted to yell back, “…And none of ‘em got drawers on, homie!”
• We finally made it to Rumshakers. Shots and beers, shots and beers, shots and beers. And dancing. Then more shots and beers.
• Our buddy Joe, a bartender at Rumshakers, took a shining to J-Cray’s drunk behind. We then killed his designs on the night when we told him she’s married.
• Swag Montana was shlammered, and it was time to say goodnight to the bad guy. Canada, Tony, and I bought six packs and got everyone into cabs.
  

Monday

For the third morning in a row…“Ouch.”

• I awoke on the floor of Canada’s bedroom, clutching a large Clifford stuffed toy that I’d used as a pillow.
• TD was still smashed. Swag slightly less so, but he wasted no time in cracking a beer from the fridge to start anew.
• The three of us, Skeets, and Canada went to DeLuca’s in the Strip District for breakfast. While we waited in a line that extended out the door of the restaurant and down the street, it quickly became apparent that having my little sis out in public was both a bad idea and incredibly entertaining. She was like a puppy sister.
• 
  It was my first time eating at DeLuca’s, but not my last. D-to-the-lish. Just typing about it is making my mouth water.
• The Pirate Parrot, without warning and completely at random, rode past on a moped, tooling down Penn Avenue.
• As we walked back to Canada’s truck after eating, we happened upon two women getting into a parked car. TD yelled “High five!” and put her hand up for the woman getting into the passenger side door. The stranger looked back at her with a shocked, nervous smile; TD reacted by yelling “Hunnnnhhhh!” and running away.
• Everyone planned to hit TJ’s party that afternoon, and Swag saw no reason to half-ass it. He asked that we drop him off at Redbeard’s. We stopped, he and TD hopped out, and we pulled off. “So,” I surmised, “They’re actually going to be worse by the time the cookout starts?”
• I got back to my car, got back home, grabbed a bottle of Gatorade, hit my couch, and slept through the cookout.
  

For the first time all weekend, I woke up without a hangover. And yet, I still felt like a champion. Who knew it was possible?

Drunks Say the Darndest Things 3

I may be the only one who loves these quote posts so much—and I don’t care. I’m totally fine with the fact that this is all for me.

Pulling these together is never as easy as it would seem. There’s a wealth of material, sure; but often I neglect to make note of quotes as they happen, and therefore don’t have it at the ready when writing out the story (it may be shocking to read, but sometimes I tend to forget things when I’ve been drinking). Of those I do remember, I try to save some for a DSTDT post, but inevitably a lot of quotes are told as parts of other narratives. Typical of this new age of social media, though, I did manage to collect a couple from my friends’ Facebook status updates (that’s right folks—nothing’s sacred anymore). And, as usual, I have also included one of the many random moments of brilliance from years past that have sat in my crew’s vault, dusty and unpublished—until now.

• During our pre-Brewski, Friday-night-on-the-town in Johnstown last April, Dupa was in rare form. He put on a one-man show, dancing with the girls, wearing Shannon’s earrings, and spitting out zingers left and right. Far more than the alcohol, though, what seemed to inspire his verbal mastery on this night was our favorite doctor’s revealing attire. During one pause in the group’s convo, he turned to Dr. Kelly and—saying, “Let’s pretend I’m an ostrich and your cleavage is a sand pit”—buried his face in her chest.
  
  The best of his best, however, came not much later. The girls and guys had momentarily dissolved into separate conversations, and during a small break in ours Dupa looked over again at Dr. By then he was merely the dummy to the booze’s ventriloquist act, and didn’t seem to realize that his thoughts weren’t being restricted to his head. Barely loud enough for her to hear, he said, “I’m BP, and you’re the Gulf Coast; wanna see my oil spill?”
  
  
• The following night at Seven Springs, after a long day of Brewski pregaming, Brewski Festing, and Brewski after-partying, our cast of characters found themselves pushed to their limits. By the end of the night we were a broken and battered platoon administering battlefield triage throughout the sprawling mountain resort. When he dragged himself over to the bar to get a beer at last call, Entertainer found LRG standing there alone, finishing a drink.
  
  Within seconds they were approached by a bouncer who was visibly unhappy. Pointing at LRG, the bouncer barked, “He’s cut off!” Entertainer, stunned, assured the bouncer that he would keep LRG from causing more trouble. “Look, it’s last call, so he’s not drinking more anyways,” he argued. The bouncer relented, and walked off. Despite the confrontation, LRG had remained decidedly unfazed.
  
  Entertainer: “What did you do?"
  LRG: “I don’t know. Kicked a table? Hit a girl? *shrug*”
  
  
• My manager may be a grandmother, but that doesn’t mean she can’t hang. I’ve seen this firsthand on a few business trips; the years, however, may finally be catching up to her. Last month her daughter got married, and among the dessert items at the reception were cannolis filled with a cream made with three different kinds of liquor. And it seems the baker used a liberal amount of each alcohol in the creation of these On the Rocks-worthy pastries, to the point where my manager told me, “I didn’t drink much at the wedding; but then when I went to bed…the ceiling fan wasn’t on, but it was moving.”
  
  
• Last Memorial Day, TD was out of hand. She bounced around without stoppage at her and Baby Joey’s annual party, dancing, yelling at people randomly, and kissing her girlfriends in true barsexual spirit. Late in the night, she and her friend Leah were the subject of a fantastic picture, in which Leah sat in shock as her friend performed an impromptu lap dance on her. Leah’s facial expression as TD’s sundress is thrust at her in the photo is priceless. After I showed them the picture, TD summed up the moment captured by the digital eye. “Everything Leah does with her face, I do with my crotch.”
  
  
• One weeknight last spring, her girl 2Ls popped up in my Facebook news feed with a quick message to a dear friend. “hangover, I'll meet you in the morning, 8am, give or take... until then, have a good night..”
  
  
• How in the name of Jack Daniels do you ever begin a serious drinking session knowing you haven’t eaten within the last several hours? I just can’t imagine another drinking rule as clear-cut and painfully obvious as “drinking on an empty stomach will destroy you”. And yet, one recent Tuesday morning I had the following conversation with a friend who had been sending me drunk texts at 6 pm the day before.
  
  Me: “So how you feeling today?”
  Him: “All good. A little lightheaded this morning, but I think that's because I haven't eaten in 24 hours. I puked twice, and I should not have driven home last night.”
  Me: “So, explain to me exactly how you say to yourself, ‘I haven't had any food all day. I should ingest some alcohol.’"
  Him: “Silly... I didn't start talking to myself ‘til drink #8 or so.”
  
  
• Pakistanimal’s birthday was last June, and we decided to keep it somewhat reserved. TJ, Dupa, and Pak pregamed at my place, and then we all hit the ‘Side to make the blurry happen. We were soon joined at the William Penn Tavern by a murderer’s row of LRG and a few of his homies, Jay Swag, and Mitch Canada. After several rounds of birthday shots and various drinks, Pak was dazed, and found himself in a moment of defiant truthfulness while staring at a random bar slore nearby. “Yeah, I’m fucked up,” he announced to her, “and I’m looking at your tits.”
  
  
• A few days before St. Patty’s Day 2010, my buddy Weatherman was looking for a pair of smiling Irish eyes on Facebook. “Any Irish girls want to hang out? I'm drunk off Captain, and we could make one hell of an Irish pirate.”
  
  
• A couple of Fridays ago, several of us took part in a bar crawl organized by one of TD’s friends. TJ and his girlfriend, who was in town visiting, were in attendance. Since “Racktacular” (TJ’s own turn of a phrase, not mine) lives in Tampa, it took until that night for her to finally be introduced to TD. It wasn’t long, though, before she and the crazy little blonde girl had become good buddies. At the second stop on the tour, a moment of beer-fueled jubilation took hold of TD, as she said to Rackt, “We just met—let’s bump boobs!”
  
  
• Tony, also taking part in the crawl (by the way: all proceeds were going to charity, so it would’ve been socially irresponsible of us to not get sloppy drunk that night), found himself engaged in conversation with two random guys at one of the bars. After he finally pulled himself away from his new fan club, Tony then had to deal with TJ, Dupa, and I, who of course made many comments and unfounded insinuations about his true sexual orientation and the intentions of the two strangers. His immediate response, though, did little to halt that line of thinking. Waving off our jokes, he countered, “Dudes fucking love me.”
  
  
• One night several years ago, BlahBlahBlah, myself, and a few others met up at Hooters in Station Square (which has since closed) for happy hour drinks and food. The Hooters Girls were running a sports trivia game, wherein each table competed against the others to be the first to correctly answer questions. Midway through the contest, the sexy waitress in charge of it read aloud a question involving Earvin “Magic” Johnson. BBB found himself unable to hold back his mouth, instantly (and quite audibly) shooting back, “I’ll give you a ‘magic’ Johnson.’”

I Wanna Be Sedated

Or, in the words of the illustrious TD, "I want to be like this guy on Sunday!!!"



The annual Memorial Day cookout at her and Baby Joey's should be splendiferous. Salud.

Making Memorial Day Memories

Ahh, Memorial Day. Does anyone besides me find it at least mildly ironic that, as a result of celebrating a holiday dedicated to remembrance, people usually can’t remember a damn thing the next day?

Last year TD and Baby Joey hosted a Memorial Day shindig at their house for the first time. We were only about halfway through the day (and three quarters of the way through the kegs) when it was decided that the party should be a yearly event. And so, this past Sunday saw their 2nd annual drunken tribute to summertime’s unofficial start.

This was Girlfriend’s first time partying at TD & Joey’s. How well does she fit in with my friends? The first keg wasn’t even on ice yet when she asked me to pour her a cup of beer. That’s my baby. And although storm clouds and heavy rains had rolled in about mid-afternoon, the sun miraculously came out from behind the clouds the very instant that we got the keg on ice. “It was a sign from above,” Joey said later.

People and food steadily streamed into the house. TJ made an appearance, but had to work that night and thus left after a couple of hours. I think he has been frequently repeating the phrase “fuck my life” since the moment he got into his car to leave. He left even before Dupa—slowed by the South Side debauchery he had engaged in the previous night—was drug through the door by the proverbial cat. The end of Dupa's Saturday seemed to perfectly summarize his state on Sunday: Late in the alcohol-soaked night he had a moment of spontaneous clarity, and found himself freaking a 52 year old cougar on the dance floor. Along with him were his friend “Mitch Canada”, and two more cougars. He looked around at the scene, said “peace” to his boy, and walked straight out of the bar.

When Esq appeared at the party, he was rocking a pink polo shirt. In this day and age of fashion-forward thinking, that act alone doesn’t merit much hazing from your peers; but wearing an ensemble that matches your girlfriend’s does. And therefore when Shock B. walked in behind him, dressed in a flawlessly-matched pink shirt, cackles were heard from every corner. Hollywood, in tribute, ran out to his car to change into a golf shirt that nearly matched 1L’s top.

Dupa made a mistake of another nature: he crossed Girlfriend’s path while holding a hamburger that was smothered in mustard and ketchup. My lady had developed quite a buzz by this point in the night, and she stopped him long enough to hungrily take two bites out of the burger. She then wiped her hands—mustard doused, as they were—with his blue Tommy Hilfiger polo shirt. When Dupa brought it to her attention that she had left two giant yellow stains on his shirt, Girlfriend said, “Deal with it!” and ran off mischievously. Joey offered to loan a top to him, and took him to his closet. When they found a pink polo identical to the one Esq was wearing, Dupa began shaking with joy. He put it on, and ran out into the living room to stand beside Esq, who was only mildly amused.

Tony and I spotted a large table out in the yard that had been left vacant; we quickly picked it up and carried it over to the porch, nearly shoving fellow partygoers out of the way as we declared a start to the night’s beer pong matches. Soon ping pong balls were flying through the night air, and I was chugging down beer four times faster. I really need to shake some rust off of my pong game.

Dupa and I were one of the first teams on the table; but, by the time we’d lost that first game, the signup sheet was ten teams deep. Relegated to the spectators’ gallery for the time being, I checked in with Girlfriend, TD, and others in the dining room. Girlfriend was getting along splendidly with TD’s friends, particularly 1L and “2Ls”. When a song came on over the stereo and struck TD’s boogie nerve, she began giving an impromptu lap dance to 2Ls, who was seated to my right at the table. Girlfriend, who had been sitting in my lap, sprung up and began freaking 1L against the opposite wall in response. And me? I grinned like the Cheshire Cat…and snapped a few action shots. When the dance-off subsided, 1L walked away. But Girlfriend responded by grabbing Shock, throwing her into a chair, and climbing on top of her for a lap dance (more grinning; more camera flashes). I turned back towards Esq, who was in the living room, and called his attention to our better halves. With a smile, he gave a slight shake of his head and said, “Ain’t nothin wrong with that!”

Though action like this is typically right up Hollywood’s alley, he was suspiciously absent. A short while later I walked out into the backyard to check on the beer pong action. I found him seated in a folding chair near the keg, eating from a bowl of fruit—fruit which had all been marinating in vodka for the previous day or two. The party’s music was coming from a “docked” iPod that was located near Hollywood’s seat. When Shock walked over to change the song, she bent over directly in front of him. We looked up to see a giant, sloppy grin on his face, which was less than a foot way from Shock’s booty. He almost seemed to be leaning his head towards it, as though he was going to put his ear against the seat of her short-shorts. “[Hollywood], it’s not a seashell,” I reminded. “You can’t hear the ocean.”

As the night moved on, the party’s numbers began to dwindle. Hollywood, who had hidden his keys in the house earlier in the night to prevent himself from driving home drunk, managed to find them and disappear. Tony announced “I’m out,” and said goodbye to everyone before heading into the house. Someone asked, “Is he leaving?” “No,” I replied, “He came over with me. He’s just going to sleep.” Sure enough, we saw him find his way over to a living room couch, plopping down and tapping out.

The hardcore revelers remained well into the night, mostly parked in the backyard playing and watching the beer pong battles. Girlfriend got her first taste of the action, eagerly tossing shots at cups with a mixture of curiosity and earnest competitiveness. Our friend Tank was on hand, and he had brought something special with him (other than his fiancée, Katie). Tank had won the championship in a fantasy football league started by Chief and Tony last fall. The team he beat in the title game belonged to Esq, who was none-too-pleased to see Tank produce the trophy from his car. The cup looks like a 1:10 scale model of the Stanley Cup, complete with the winner’s name etched into the side. Tank handed it to Joey, who swiftly took it over to the keg and began filling it with beer. Esq cursed as the cup was passed around for people to take sips.

Girlfriend and I soon called “No mas” as well, crashing on a futon in the spare room. The last of us stayed up until well after 3 a.m., finishing off the third and final keg. The next morning Tony, Joey, and I all awoke well before either TD or Girlfriend, who had planned on cooking us breakfast (Girlfriend had even brought eggs, bacon, and other supplies with her the day before). Finally, around noon I called TD’s cell phone—from her living room. It rang three or four times before a hoarse, depleted voice responded, “Hehhlo?”

Me: “Hey there. There are three hungry guys out here, and we were wondering if you were getting up anytime soon.”
TD: *pause* “I feel like I’m gonna die.”

You Can't Make This Up

Imagine, for a moment, the following scenario:

You’re a guy hanging out at a jumping Memorial Day cookout. And while there are lots of attractive young women at this party, you have been informed by the hostess that only one or two of them are available. Of these two girls, one is a beautiful blonde, who has a personality to match her looks. Unfortunately, the odds are against you in this scenario; because, while there’s one of her, there are 5 or 6 of you—that is, a young, single man with interest in winning her affections. Never one to back down from a challenge, though, you toss your hat into the ring. You find a moment to grab her attention, and then manage to hold it with interesting conversation, foregoing games of beer pong and exchanging drunken stories with your friends, devoting your sole attention to this angel. She leaves early that night, but not before suggesting that you visit her on the following Friday night at the place where she bartends.

Now, to say you’re excited would be an understatement. Not only is she a great girl who seems to have shown some genuine interest in you, but you have just outmaneuvered every other single guy at the cookout. You’re the winner, the undisputed champ of the party; you have bragging rights over a field of competitors. And over the next few days, your mind occasionally drifts off, daydreaming about the fun you and she can have together, and the looks of jealousy you will be collecting from your boys when they find out that you’re involved with her. You gather some of your friends on the appointed Friday—including her friend “T-Dizzle,” the party hostess who introduced you to each other—and venture out to the object of your desire’s bar. You enter, and see her standing there with a smile, looking every bit as fine as you remembered. You stand behind T-Dizzle as she greets her friend, and await the friendly-yet-encouraging hug that a brand new romantic interest brings. And as T-Dizzle turns to acknowledge you, with anticipation and nerves building in your head, the beautiful blonde vixen looks straight into your eyes and says…

“Nice to meet you.”

Now imagine how many shots and frosty mugs of beer you have to wash down the throats of your boys (one of whom has an internet blog, and is just enough of an a**hole to post your story) just to get them to stop laughing. …And—if there’s any mercy in this world—to forget.