We're Not For Everyone (Intro)

Some people deal in absolutes. Never wear brown with black. Always wait an hour to swim after eating. Always let the boss win. Never fake the funk on a nasty dunk. I’m more of a realist. And, as a realist, I recognize that nothing’s black-and-white. Sometimes things go one way, sometimes they go the other. So when someone inevitably tells you “No good ideas are thought of when you’re drunk,” pat them on the head and just smirk.

Last Christmas Eve I stopped at William Penn Tavern on a whim, looking to catch up with my boy MoFo, who I hadn’t seen in years. While I was there, he and Jed mentioned a trip that T.C. and Hurley had cooked up for March. A “guys’ trip,” wherein gents from Pittsburgh would descend upon Raleigh, NC—where MoFo lives—to enjoy a weekend of heavy drinking and NCAA tourney games. I considered it somewhat half-heartedly, knowing I had the Chicago trip coming early in that same month, which was going to bite a serious chunk out of my bank account. A couple of nights later, before I blacked out, T.C. and Hurley pitched the trip to me themselves. Nearby Chapel Hill is always packed with booze and coeds, I’d been promising MoFo for years that I’d visit him in NC, the hotel room would be free (T.C. has rewards points out the ass), and nearby Chapel Hill is always packed with booze and coeds…

“Sure… *sips Manhattan* Why not? *gulps Manhattan* It’s only money! *orders another Manhattan*”

When I sobered up a couple of days later, I guarded against disaster by telling T.C. my participation would hinge on how big of a hit my finances took in Chicago. And so, when I somehow made it home alive from the Chi in March, I tallied up what I’d spent. It was about half what I had expected to drop. I quickly texted T.C. “It’s on.”

The last time T.C., Hurley, and I went on a trip together was Buffalo in 2011; before that was San Diego in 2008. So…yeah. This time around we’d be adding Trip and MoFo to the mix [Jed had to bow out due to family issues]. There’s a network sitcom writer out there somewhere who’s kicking himself for not thinking up a pilot with a plotline based on this gathering of guys in their early 30s, all in different places in their love lives. A summary:

• MoFo – Having married a girl thought at the time to be his soulmate (by him and all around him) in 2005, in the last few years he’s enjoyed the highs of becoming a dad and the lows of a bitter divorce. Now a bachelor, he dotes on his daughter on the daddy weekends and dotes on the ladies on the Who’s yo daddy weekends.
• T.C. – Happily married for 7+ years, the homie is a consummate family man, with two rambunctious blonde-haired boys, a dog, and a beautiful house in the suburbs. Funding the construction of a new house for his clan at the time, he continues to break his back every day to keep everyone happy, healthy, and fed.
• Trip – A renowned playboy in his younger years, our goofy friend has finally met the woman for him, and at the time was engaged to be married to her later in the year. And the transition of his private life mirrored that of his professional one: In the year prior to the trip he had given up his dream career in front of cameras for one behind a desk. Once out there living the public (albeit local) glamour life, he’s now dedicated to a quiet existence with his bride-to-be, focused on long-term happiness.
• Hurley – For quite some time my homie has been a fellow bachelor, doing bachelor things. Several months before that March weekend, however, he’d succumbed to a much younger girl who had locked him down. Newly in love, he had been doing the dance we all do when re-familiarizing ourselves with domestication. You know, avoiding bar sluts, fewer weekend nights unaccounted for… The standard.
• Me – I just don’t give a fuck. As previously discussed.

Ready to roll. Let's go.

Honestly, you couldn’t imagine five friends with more diverse personal lives. And yet we all fit together like pieces of a puzzle. A GMC Yukon was rented, days were called off from work, I listened to “Raise Up” a few hundred times, and we prepared to unleash ourselves upon the South.

[To be continued...]

The Best of That Which Was 2013

I’ve messed with the year-end list concept once before. It got old for me about five minutes after I finished the post. But nostalgia can intoxicate you as well as any bottle of scotch ever could, and the final couple of weeks of every year are full of it (and full of scotch, if you’re lucky). Toasting to the days that passed, awaiting the inevitable tide of ones to come, and such. So, skipping the ceremony and pageantry oft associated with these types of posts, let’s raise our glasses to 2013’s best.


Best Drink
I discovered the Papa Doble. To be more specific, I discovered Simon Difford’s recipe, which calls for four and a quarter shots of booze to two of lime and grapefruit juice. That’s over six shots of powerful, sour fuel charging its way into your veins.

More often than not, I’ve only mixed them up on quiet nights in, where I know I’m the only one I’m endangering with this high octane. Once or twice, though, I’ve kicked off turnt up nights with a couple of Papas. And each time I’ve awoken the next morning wondering why the fuck I did that, while I carefully check the building for bodies.


Best Life Lesson
Stupidity is expensive.

I’ll get to the “What I Learned This Summer” post later [If you thought it would be posted before January…well, then you must be new to the site. Welcome! Have a Papa Doble!], but half of the summer of ’13 was dominated by learning that previous statement. It seems like it should be an obvious concept, especially when you’re 34. But then I ran shin-first into a fire hose fitting.

It seems like it should be obvious…


Best Decision
2013 was the year I finally grew out a beard. And now I don’t know what life would be without it. I started it during the Penguins’ playoff run in May. Of course, that’s also when I learned about “playoff bushes,” so…call it a draw.

Most Improved at the Twitterz
Dupa learned to live tweet his drunken moments, and it’s everything I had dreamt it could be when he first opened a Twitter account. Just read the sequence from the start of his flight to Hong Kong earlier yesterday. (Click on the images to the right; for the Twitter-illiterate, read from bottom-up, beginning with the bottom picture—which, coincidentally, has a picture of a bottom in it. #BottomPicCeption. For the Twitter vets, yes “@CS_Defi” is my new handle.)

That’s pure, 100%, raw uncut Dupa. I’m just mad he didn’t make use of the inflight Wi-Fi to keep the viewing experience going. Now we’ll never know if he took his pants off and danced around the cabin.

…He probably took off his pants and danced around the cabin.



Most Improved Wifeyness
I’ve loved Aubrey Plaza since the first few episodes of Parks and Recreation. But this year she made me mentally propose.

Some say her drunken debacle at the MTV Movie Awards was faked. Some say it was real. Honestly, either way I’m impressed. You’re telling me a beautiful, funny young actress either (a.) got so irreversibly party-drunk that she tried to wrestle an award away from someone onstage, or (b.) did such an incredible job of acting drunk that no one immediately questioned whether or not she was? Sign me up. I love me some Aubrey.

Most Fun I Had Involving Naked Women
Bareoke Night happened for my crew eight months ago. How it hasn’t happened again is completely beyond me. Everything ridiculous and boozily hilarious happens there, and therefore there is where I wanna be.


Best Morning After Meal
DeLuca’s. Madone. Trust me, if you show up hungover and find a line, just wait there in it. You’ll thank me once you’re in a seat with a plate full of amazing in front of you.


Best Birthday Mayhem
Leave it to TD and Boy Toy; for her birthday party, they put together a huge scavenger hunt across the South Side to be completed by their friends. Six or seven teams raced every which way between bars lining Carson St., getting strangers involved with our tasks. I mean, really involved. After the contest was over, everyone retreated to the home of the birthday girl and her boyfriend, where folks continued drinking themselves senseless.


Best Job of Convincing Me to Do What I Shouldn’t
When it’s 11 pm on a work night and you’re at the bar, you’re inevitably faced with a decision: “Go” or “No Go.” The smart money, of course, is on “No Go.” But the simple fact that you’re faced with the question tells me that you’re not familiar with smart decisions. Which means you’re like me—specifically, like me this past Thursday.

MoFo, Jed, T.C., and Hurley were out at Shady Grove that night. And though I caught up with them expecting to be in my bed by midnight, a few Manhattans and words of peer pressure had me piling into Hurley’s car to head to Cain’s in Dormont. I awoke on Hurley’s couch at 7:42 a.m., texted my manager to tell her I’d be a little late getting in, and spent the rest of the day hating myself and my friends, and all that was life.


Biggest Mystery
Seriously, what the hell happened to my Timb lace?


Salud.

Get Grown

Men drink Manhattans. That's not some overwrought attempt to puff out my proverbial chest. And it's not a misogynistic jab at the ladies; a woman drinking a Manhattan neat is sex personified.

Look you can drink whatever you want. But if you've never reveled in the exquisite dance of whiskey, vermouth, and bitters seducing your tongue, you can't call yourself an adult. Not within earshot of me. Frankly, "Drink Manhattans" should have been found somewhere on the Business Insider list I posted the other day. (As much as I loved that collection of rules, the fact that it makes no mention of Manhattans threatens to invalidate the whole thing.) So take this lesson from Joaquin Simo to heart, and step into your big boy (or big girl) pants.

From Thrillist:

If you ask 10 different bartenders how to make a drink, you'll likely get 10 different answers. Which is why you should just listen to us, and our man Joaquín Simó, the face of NYC's Pouring Ribbons, who was named nothing less than Bartender of the Year at Tales of the Cocktail 2012.

This time we're taking on one of the classic-est of classics -- prepare to get step-by-stepped through the Only Manhattan You'll Ever Need.

Drunks Say the Darndest Things 5

TD: “‘Za is so good!’ should’ve made it.”
Me: “Yeah, well…You had one in there.”
TD: “Yeah, I know…”

Four years ago, it occurred to me that my drunken friends say some really stupid things. …Okay, okay; my drunken friends and I say some really stupid things. I threw together six or so quick examples to prove this thesis, and posted it without much more of a thought.

Fast-forward to January 2012; after posting a fourth edition of the now annual quotes write-up, my little-sister-from-another-mother was questioning my selection. It’s not like TD opened the blog post and was angered at finding I had published a quote of hers. No, her dispute was over the choice I had made among her personal catalog of drunken quotes. She wasn’t uptight over me putting one of her goofier moments on the internet; she was critical that it wasn’t the goofiest moment of hers that I could have used.

These are my friends. And this is just one of the many reasons why I love them.

In 2011, I finally had the good sense to keep a log on my phone of specific quotes as they happened—or, to be more accurate, I tried to keep a log. The best laid plans of mice and blotto men… This past year I was much better at it, and I compiled quite the hitlist for this edition of DSTDT in the process. If you said something to me (or around me) that isn’t listed below, you probably weren’t as funny as you thought. …Or I was just a lot drunker than you thought.

Without much further ado, here are more moments of drunken brilliance and brilliant drunkeness in my crew’s endless pursuit of the perfect buzz.

• This past St. Patrick’s Day, our girl Belle was injured before a single Car Bomb had been detonated. As she bled from Eve’s wound, we did our best to make her forget about it fun of her for it. While she and Jay Swag played against TJ and Rackt on Shannon’s W&J-Black-and-Red cornhole set, a thought came over me. “Wait…” I said, interrupting TJ’s throw. “Shouldn’t Belle be throwing the red bags?”
  
  
• One night in late summer, TJ called me to share one of his typically insane stories, the kind that only he could find himself involved in. The female antagonist in the tale, who had quite literally gone insane, was seemingly driven over the edge by Swag’s refusal to date her. A little later that night, I texted the man in question for background on this drama.
  
  Me: “Apparently your penis is the source of much magic and sorcery.”
  Swag: “lol. Just talked to [TJ] for 20 mins. Holy fuck.”
  Me: “Yeah. Insanity. All caused by you not being freer with the velvet rope you call a zipper.”
  Swag: “lol. She’s been avoiding me like the plague.
  A) I don’t care.
  B) You’re not attractive.
  C) I don’t play games, I’m a grown ass man.”
  Me: “LOL. The force is strong in this one.”
  Swag: “She’s stupid. You boob bang someone one time and they have to catch feelings. *sigh*”
  
  
• My girl Steph came into town in late April to visit and show off her very prominent baby bump. She gathered about 12 of her friends for dinner one night, including TJ, Dupa, and me. As we all B.S.’d around the table, her friend Molly brought up a cultural difference between companies in Europe and those here in the states: some European corporations keep beds in their offices so that employees can take naps. I immediately saw the number 1 reason why this idea would never work in the US. “There are too many sexual harassment laws for me to have a bed in my office.”
  
  
• During our night of revelry in Ybor City, TK uncovered a drinking issue that seems specific to massage therapists. Rackt was trying to describe an injury she had suffered at CrossFit, and as she stumbled in detailing the location of the strain, TK began rattling off Latin-worded diagnoses. Catching himself, he stopped and explained, “When I get drunk I start naming muscles.”
  
  
• As TK and I sat taking in the scene at Gaspar’s Grotto later in the night, a fella at the other end of the bar was romancin’ and b-boy stancin’. When he walked past a cute emo girl who was standing near us, drinking from a glass of clear liquid, he stopped to engage her in small talk.
  
  Guy: “What’re you drinking?”
  Girl: “Gin & Tonic.”
  Guy: *walking away* “Ah…classy bitch.”
  
  
• As I documented last summer, several of my friends took part in a kickball tournament one Saturday in August, and then hit the bar afterwards—hard. At Shady Grove, talk amongst some of the women in our group centered around Wall Street’s moment of glory, when an open bathroom door left him exposed in Alex’s glass-walled shower.
  
  Wall Street: “I should’ve pressed my cock against the glass.”
  Me: *sipping from my Manhattan* “If you had looked closely, you would’ve seen the imprints from all of the other guys who’ve pressed their cocks against the glass in Alex’s shower.”
  
  
• The following Monday, I texted Alex to ask if she had caught The Newsroom the night prior. But her hangover from Saturday’s fun, it seemed, had handicapped her well into the night. “I think right about then,” she texted back, “I was laying on my hardwood floor praying for god to just take me.”
  
  
• TK was barhopping around St. Pete and Treasure Island one night last year, and in doing so managed to spill a drink on his shirt. When he happened upon a random, unattractive chick, she called him out.
  
  Chick: “Is that cum on your shirt?”
  TK: “No, but you want some on your face?”
  Chick: “Yeah!”
  TK: *blank stare*
  
  
• With cold germs and flu bugs wreaking havoc on the East Coast in the month of December, all three of my team members at work were sick at different times during a two-week period. Since all four of us sit in the same small, open-plan section of the office, it was a minor miracle that I avoided coming down with something. When this fact occurred to my manager, she asked, “How didn’t YOU get sick?” With a grin, I answered, “I disinfect myself every night.”
  
  
• The Saturday before NYE found several of us at TD & Boy Toy’s house for a night day of boozing. During a furious game of (drunken) Catch Phrase, Boy Toy tossed out clues to try to bring his teammates closer to his given word. TD wasn’t on his team, but wasn’t about to let that—or inhibitions—stop her.
  
  Boy Toy: “Uh…ok. When I come to something, I come…?”
  TD: “BUCKETS!”
  
  
• My friend Ton’s wedding was a blur of booze, dancing, lewd behavior in the photo booth, and more booze, all in the wilds of Eastern Ohio. The next morning I awoke in a room at the Days Inn—next to a pizza, courtesy of Dupa. Although my travelling companion hadn’t passed out quite as early as I had, his recollection of the previous night’s events was no less clouded. He hopped out of his bed and walked into the bathroom to take a shower. As I put the pizza box on the dresser, Dupa called out, “Apparently I ate a piece of pizza while pissing; there’s a crust in here.”
  
  
• Jay Swag’s 30th birthday was a three-day murder scene, where everyone put his or her liver in a pit and ordered it to put the lotion—and a can of Four Loko Watermelon—in the basket. As things got underway on Thursday evening, I cracked open a Loko, sat down on the couch, and snapped a picture of the can with my phone. When everyone in the room stared at me, I looked up and explained, “I’m going to want to know why tomorrow.”
  
  
• The pace of our intake hadn’t slowed down one bit by the following Saturday. Collette’s drunk wasn’t satisfied with sadistically torturing her internal organs; it even projected racist stereotypes onto her.She asked for a sip of my Loko, having never had tried it before. She smacked her lips, examining the flavor. “Is that watermelon,” she asked, “or does it just taste like that because I’m Black?”
  

Kicking and Screaming

As Grandma Klump would say: I walked over, but I limped back.

Well, to be more realistic, I stumbled back. I’m guessing. I mean, I was about 85% blacked out. And I was in a hurry—the curtain was falling fast on that final 15%. I was in the wilds of Shadyside on a Saturday night, and the pathway to my apartment—and to safety—was quickly disappearing. Not that the streets and sidewalks were going away—just my ability to see them. It was a race to the finish; I fell through the doorway of my apartment building just as the darkness closed in around me.

I awoke the next morning lying facedown, perpendicular across the top of a made bed. Thankfully, it was my bed. I was wearing an undershirt and boxers. My Tommy Hilfiger polo was on a couch in the living room. My cargo shorts were on the floor in my bedroom. So was the silver string of plastic, star-shaped beads. My socks were missing in action. What caused all of this cataclysmic destruction, you ask?

Kickball.

More specifically, it was a charity kickball tournament. One in which Pakistanimal, Mrs. Pak, TJ, Alex, Shannon, Jay Swag, Mitch Canada, Belle, and others had all taken part last Saturday. I, like any sensible adult on a humid, 90°F August day, stayed home. And when I did leave my place, it was just to go to the barbershop. My friends, in all of their wisdom, began drinking around 9 a.m. in the muggy misery of Pittsburgh summer. Then they ran, sweated, and injured themselves…playing kickball. And they tried to argue that I was being the silly one.

After the tournament, all of the aforementioned suspects (aside from TJ, who was on Daddy Duty) headed to Mario’s Eastside Saloon in The ‘Side. I finally walked over to join them at a little before 5 p.m. But, while I was just beginning my day’s imbibement, I was a solid eight hours behind the rest. Given the wide range of behaviors, intoxications, and events to discuss—not to mention several significant gaps in my memory—I’ll just bullet point the highlights:

• Jealous that I was freshly showered, several of the Gym Class Heroes tried to hug their sweaty nastiness onto me when I arrived. I came oh-so-close to swinging away like Ashtray in Don’t Be a Menace.
• Alex jumped up and down dancing for a moment. When she saw me pause and fixate on her quite ample chest, which was active in her shirt, she seemed to learn for the first time that big boobs bounce. “Wow,” she said, continuing to jump up and down with her eyes glued at a downward 90 degree angle. I’m not quite sure how she didn’t end up with two black eyes.
• When I met up with the group, they were on the deck upstairs, which was a sauna. Why they thought this was acceptable is as unknown to me as why they felt it worthwhile to play kickball. Canada, Swag, and I soon led a migration to Shady Grove, where there was air conditioning.
• After the tournament, our buddy “Wall Street” was the only one sensible enough to get a full shower. While he did so at Alex’s apartment, her cat pushed open the bathroom door; this gave anyone who walked past the bathroom—including a suddenly prudish Shannon—a full view of him in the glass-walled shower. When Mrs. Pak (who was successfully tanked) later learned of this anecdote, however, she was aghast that neither girl took the opportunity to check out Wall’s goods. She (repeatedly) explained in no uncertain terms the ogling, fondling, etc. that would’ve taken place had she been in their shoes. Nodding towards Wall, I said, “I think [she] just added you to her ‘Exceptions’ list, man. ‘George Clooney’…‘Brad Pitt’…‘[Wall Street]’.”
• Pak was…well, Pak: Drunk, audacious, chain-smoking, boastful, etc. And loud. After an hour or so at Grove, our bartender—sensing me to be the voice of reason soberest member of the group—asked me to keep him under control. It seems that, though he was only spending about half of his time standing near me, Pak had provoked four separate groups of diners to move from the tables in the dining area on that side of the bar.
• Being as far behind in the pickling process as I was, I decided that my drink orders would be liquor instead of beer. Earlier that week I had come down with a minor head cold, and had taken to drinking bourbon—and, in most cases, Manhattans—as a home remedy. Therefore I decided to continue improving my health with the bourbon, vermouth, and bitters mixture. I’m not sure exactly how many I put away, but…well, refer to the opening paragraphs above.
• Midway through the night Alex produced three strings of plastic beads: one red, one silver, one blue. They had been accessories of hers to the Olympics Opening Ceremony party she and I had attended the week before, and were now stowaways in her purse. I vaguely remember snatching the silver strand out of her hand and throwing it around my neck. I've always found boozing to be a patriotic experience.
• While others soon departed (Swag and Canada had a bachelor party to attend; Pak and Mrs. Pak are married, and therefore cannot be out after sundown; Belle and the rest left to pursue various acts of depravity), Alex, Shannon, Wall Street, and I held firm. Despite our advanced state of blotto, we each had the good sense to order dinner. Hindsight being 20/20, I can only imagine the carnage that would have resulted had we not made that experience-taught move.
• Shannon’s aforementioned prudishness melted away as she drank. With no provocation from the rest of us, she took the uneaten tater tots from her meal and some dipping sauce, and made a work of art. (Clearly, Mrs. Pak wasn’t the only one questioning her refusal to prey on Wall Street’s earlier state of vulnerability.)
• This is an excerpt from a text conversation I had the following Wednesday.
  
  Me: “I don’t remember leaving, but I vaguely remember pretending to be on a phone call as I walked down the street. Which leads me to believe I was running away.”
  Me: “It’s a standard drunk tactic of mine.”
  Me: “Wait, who wasn’t wearing pants?”
  Alex: “Ahha I will remember that.”
  Alex: “I wasn’t wearing pants…I found them in front of my kitchen sink the next morning.”
  Me: “LOL. Totes…”