Merry New Beer!

I’ve hated Christmas since I was old enough to know why to hate Christmas (about 23, for those of you still not quite there yet). This time around, it was New Year’s Eve before I realized how little hating of the holidays I’d done.

Don’t misunderstand—I wasn’t happy about it being Christmas; I just didn’t pay attention to the same raw nerves that typically get exposed this time of year. Work has sought to absolutely destroy me over the last few months, and as a result I’ve been largely numb to all that was going on around me. [I legitimately thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown one day, but that’s for a blog I’ll inevitably write and recite as part of a group therapy session.] The obvious negatives of such a situation aside, the positive is that Christmas was blandly tolerable. One might say mildly enjoyable, even, if for no other reason than it forced my company to let me stay at home for a few days. Yay work misery!

I certainly didn’t get to relax as much at the end of December as I used to, back when I worked for a company that gave us paid holidays from Christmas Eve through New Years. But old friends being in town and a few nights where you don’t have to set the alarm clock mean booze is going to be poured. And if booze is going to be poured, well then…something, something, me waking up in weird places.


Monday, December 23rd
Once upon a time, I tried to bring rise to a new tradition called Christmas Eve Eve. It went strong for about four years before fading in ‘12. But it’s not dead yet.

Dupa, home from Houston for Christmas, gathered several of us that night for dinner at Church Brew Works. Six young professionals ate, drank, and became increasingly louder and more profane, to the point that I could feel the families seated near us cringe each time one of our voices built towards its crescendo. After dinner most of us went to our respective homes to decompress—including me. I honestly thought Christmas Eve Eve’s tradition had entered oblivion. Turns out, I just wasn’t believing in it hard enough.

TD and Canada believed, though. An hour after I had come home, I began receiving picture texts from the two of them. Awesome, drunken images of Lil Sis and various people with their eyes narrowed paper thin, chucking peace signs and grabbing breasts at Sloppy Joe’s. I’ve never been prouder of family who aren’t really family but are really family.

A week later, Canada gave all of us his postscript to that night: TD and Boy Toy dropped him off in front of his house around midnight (he’d managed to spend $80 at a dive bar where a mixed drink costs about $4, so you can go ahead and calibrate your expectations to how this ends). They watched him open his front door and walk into the crib before they left. Nevertheless, around 4 a.m. Canada awoke…lying in the bushes in front of the house.


Tuesday, December 24th
TD, Boy Toy, and TJ joined my cousin, her husband and I for dinner at my mother’s house. Bottles of wine and Heineken marched in full and rolled out empty. The guests marched in empty and rolled out full. Mom has never been one to half-ass it in the kitchen, and we feasted on a delicious home cooked ham dinner (TD ate fish) with all the fixins’. Also, a giant cake shaped like the Grinch’s head that TJ brought (it’s tradition; the last couple of years have seen cakes shaped like Santa and Rudolph).

When I got back to Shadyside that night, I stopped at William Penn Tavern to catch up with Mo-Fo and Jed. It was the first time in over two years that I’d seen Mo-Fo, who lives in North Carolina. As we caught up over draughts, a steady stream of familiar faces from around the neighborhood rolled in for drinks and holiday cheer beer. It wasn’t a night of loose women and drunken episodes, but instead a chance to catch up on each other’s tales of loose women and drunken episodes. You need those nights. When stress melts away and all that’s left is laughter and community.


Wednesday, December 25th
Christmas Day. Spiked eggnog with my mom while opening gifts. Wine with dinner. Sometimes things don’t change simply because they ain’t broke.

For those wondering (and since I’ve catalogued my alcohol-related gifts in the past): A bottle of Bulleit 10 Year Bourbon from my Lil Sis, a bottle of Glenfiddich Nadurra from my manager, an On the Rock Glass and bottle of Makers from Armo, and a bottle of Chivas Regal 12 from my mom. The quantity of booze gifts may be going down, but the rising quality is more than making up for it.


Thursday, December 26th
I fought the system by calling in sick instead of going into the office. Never mind that I legitimately needed it because I was too exhausted to function when I awoke that morning, or that I still put in about four or five hours of work from my dining room table…Viva La Revolucion!

That night T.C., Hurley, Mo-Fo, and Jed convinced me to venture over to Grove for the second half of Pitt’s bowl game. I began drinking Manhattans, and then…well, the next-to-last entry in this post happened. The most irreversibly shlammered I’d been in some time, I barely remember being at Cain’s. I do recall sitting down and ordering a beer. Then I awoke on Hurley’s couch.


Friday, December 27th
If you’ve gotta spend half of a day at work drunk, and the other half viciously hungover, I recommend doing it on a Friday when none of the executives are in the building. Thank god I have the kind of cool-as-hell manager who found my ever-deteriorating state hilarious and not wage-garnering-ous. I spent my Friday night at home, thank you very much.


Saturday, December 28th
Esq and Shock hosted the annual holiday reunion of some of our closest friends at my homie’s big, beautiful “lawyer’s house” (think it was my mom who coined that term) in the far northern suburbs of the city. Chief, Tank, Mrs. Tank (Katie), Finn, Genoa, BBB, Tony, and others gathered to drink the booze, catch up, and reminisce on the good ol’ days. All of the college stories about the girls we did or didn’t bag, the fights, the Federales, the masturbating roommates—all of it played like a classic movie marathon, one after the other.

Some in the crowd, like the ladies and the suddenly urbane Chief, drank wine. I, on the other hand, eased into the night by drinking bottles of Miller Lite. By around midnight we’d killed off two cases, and it was time for some beer pong in the three-car garage (once Esq had backed out one of the “his-and-hers” Escalades). That’s when the Beast Light came out—W&J waters run deep. By 4:30 a.m. I was passed out in one of the guest rooms.


Sunday, December 29th
I awoke the next morning to Chief passed out on the floor of the room. “I was so mad when I got up there and found out you’d beaten me to it,” he told me before we each headed home that day, “that I decided to sleep on the floor out of spite, even though I knew there were 50 open couches in this house.”


Monday, December 30th
…What am I, an animal? I laid low and stayed dry. Bitches.


Tuesday, December 31st
The main event. The Academy Awards of Drinking. The Blotto Super Bowl. I prepped like any professional does: by shoving a McDonald’s Extra Value Meal down my throat and showing up on TD and Boy Toy’s doorstep around 8 p.m. with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot in my hand.

There was beer pong in the garage, of which I took part in for a while, Armo and I hardly making a dent in the night’s competition. There was lively, drunken conversation in the kitchen, of which I took a LOT of parts in. There was a game of Spades in the dining room with Joel, TJ, and Affliction, of which I cheated in (…was totally playing “Asshole” in my mind for the first hand or two). There was the ball drop, punctuated by about 10 different bottles of champagne being popped in a living room filled with 20 people and zero cups—straight chuggin’, homie.

Shannon provided my New Year’s kiss; Mo Paddle provided my New Year’s style via comically-oversized sunglasses; Lil Sis provided my New Year’s ego by pointing out that we were the only two drinking real champagne (she had her own bottle of Clicquot); and one of Boy Toy’s best friends provided my New Year’s comedy by passing out on the toilet with his pants around his ankles. And the host himself provided the New Year’s drama, getting into a fight with Under The Porch (UTP) that spilled out into the front yard, and resulted in me shoving Toy and TD back into their house and others shoving UTP into the backseat of a car headed away from the scene. (By the way…we’re all adults.) Toy found out a couple of days later that he had broken a couple of his ribs in the commotion. And, for some reason, the people who removed UTP were mad at TD the next morning for him being at their place. (…Adults.)


Wednesday, January 1st

Tradition is tradition. pic.twitter.com/bT6pc7GmDD
— The D.E.F.I. (@CS_Defi) January 1, 2014

Of the two couches in TD’s living room, I awoke on the smaller one. Of course. “Toilet Napper” had taken the larger couch the night before. But when I awoke, it was unoccupied. I moved over, stretched out, and began drifting back to sleep in the growing 8 a.m. sunshine. I soon felt someone shake my leg. It was Napper.

Him: “Ah, dude, I was sleeping there. I just got up to go to the bathroom.”
Me: “Yeah…that sucks.” *rolls over and goes back to sleep*

A couple of hours later I finally headed home, with a quick stop at Shannon’s along the way to help her with her Irish family’s tradition (a dark-haired man must come into her home and receive a shot of whiskey and one dollar at the start of each year, before she’s allowed to cross her threshold). The whiskey provided cover fire against hangover laying siege to my head, giving me the chance to retreat to the safety of my couch and five more glorious hours of slumber.

Sometimes you need a holiday from the holidays.

Florida State of Mind

It’s just like riding a bicycle. In other words, I’ve never learned.

Beginning in 2003, my former company sent me to a different city of its choosing within the contiguous United States every October. Some of the locations of the annual fall conference were fantastic: the bright lights of Las Vegas are always a win; as is San Diego, with its beautiful weather and scenery; even, surprisingly, Minneapolis and Charlotte, which both manage to combine legitimate nightlife and a small-town feel. Other host cities, however, were god awful: I’ve already talked of my distaste for Vancouver, WA; when I was 11 I saw Orlando as a waste of Earth and tourist money, and nothing changed when I was 30; Pittsburgh…because, well, I already lived here. It was behind in the game before the opening kickoff.

Recent business decisions, made by people with yearly salaries bigger than my lifetime earnings, made it likely that the 2012 event will be the organization’s last. So where better to throw your life away send off fond memories with a bang than St. Petersburg, FL?

I last visited the area in 2008, when a different conference brought me to Tampa. And after five days of strippers, Maker’s Mark, sunshine, and gambling, it’s a miracle that anything brought me back. But a lot has changed since then. The economy tanked. TJ moved to Pittsburgh. I discovered my addiction to Hispanic women. …Hell, all of those things happened by the end of 2008.

One swing towards the positive, though, was TK’s southern migration. Our favorite goofball moved to the area in the summer of 2011 in search of a better life amongst beaches and tanned blondes. When I alerted him to my travel plans, he happily agreed to be my tour guide/chaperone/co-defendant for any and every night of the October trip when my schedule would permit some time away from work.

My first day in town, a Monday, was not going to be such a night—especially since I had to be up at 5:30 the next morning. But a day of air travel and annoying coworkers soon changed my attitude towards getting away for a few hours. And when TK texted me around 3 p.m. with designs on getting buzzed like a bored housewife on a Thursday afternoon, I decided to join him that evening for dinner and drinks. By 7 I was hopping into the same old, beat up Alero that had once cruised western PA, and we were setting a course for Treasure Island.

Warm air and a coastal sunset will cure many an ill, including work stress. Alcohol is still the more effective remedy, of course; but Florida’s top two attractions—well, top two family-friendly attractions—come home a respectable second. Thankfully, all of these medications can be taken at the same time, and we hit up Sloppy Joe’s to do just that. We were shown to seats at the outdoor bar of the beachside restaurant, which was populated by a modest dinner crowd enjoying ocean breezes and light beer. As we walked past a long table on the deck, we both spotted a boxed cake, which sat alone on a cart as though it was awaiting further orders. Joking, TK pointed at it and said, “It’s my birthday, can I have that cake?” I quickly responded, “That’s a wedding cake, dumbass.”

Although I said the words, I somehow did it without processing their meaning.

As I took healthy swigs of Corona and discussed the sexy blonde bartender’s physical attributes with TK, I soon noticed a large group of people finding themselves seats at the aforementioned long table. When I spotted the white dress, I almost choked on beer. TK caught wind of it all at the same time, and it was all we could do just to reaffirm each other’s faith in our own eyesight.

TK: “There’s…a wedding reception?”
Me: “…At Sloppy Joe’s?”
TK: “…On a Monday?”

The bride wore the strapless, full-length white gown that you might expect; the groom wore a white dress shirt and khaki shorts. Guests munched on nachos. TK attempted to sneak a picture of the bride from over his shoulder when she wasn’t looking—and then froze with panic when his flash went off. Someone’s uncle randomly yelled excitedly about cheese. And I looked on in amazement, all while washing down an oversized Cuban sandwich and cheese sticks with several more Coronas.

Ahh, Tampa. (…/St. Pete/Treasure Island. Same thing.)

After dinner we decided to head back to St. Pete, and respectfully congratulated the bride and groom as we walked past them on our way to the doors. Once back in St. Pete, we parked amid a string of bars in downtown, and pulled up seats at a sidewalk table at 5 Bucks Drinkery. And on that table we sat two draughts of Bud Light big enough to cure a redneck’s erectile dysfunction. We didn’t set the town on fire that night—I was back in my hotel room by 10:30 p.m.—but I was definitely eased into my groove.

Tuesday saw a predawn-to-sunset workday, which closed with a poolside reception for all of our customers. I began the event drinking Heinekens, and eventually switched to scotch once I had gotten some dinner in me. TK and I had made plans for the next night—dinner and a more thorough night of debauchery with Racktacular in Tampa—so instead of tagging along with coworkers and/or customers headed to various nearby bars and restaurants, I thought it better to play it low key. Heading back to my room to check emails, work on a spreadsheet or two, and get some rest would be the responsible thing to do.

But then I remembered that the hotel bar had bourbon.

As quickly as I had sat down with a glass of Maker's & Coke, a group of coworkers and customers were inviting me to join them at their table. I convened with their assemblage for a half hour or so; then, as I was again about to head back to my room, I ran into three of my managers, who—along with my team manager’s husband—were sitting at the bar downing drinks. As I sat down and my program manager ordered me another Maker's & Coke, my team manager introduced me to her hubby. “Have you met Bart?” He and I reminded her that we had met previously, and she returned to her glass of wine. After another 10 minutes of conversation, she turned to me and said, “Hey, have you met Bart?”

My program manager was a fellow lover of American whiskey. I ordered another Maker's & Coke, but he stopped the bartender and told her to change it to what he was drinking: Basil Hayden’s, neat. The smooth bourbon rubbed my shoulders and whispered sweet nothings to my consciousness. Fantastic stuff, that. I added one last Maker's & Coke to my body count, and then slipped off to my room. Two relatively quiet St. Pete nights in a row; I felt like such a cocktail tease.

I knew, though, that Wednesday would certainly bring a return to normalcy. By the end of the business day, I was ready to drink away anything work-related; “sloppy-drunk” was my affirmed goal. And before long, TK and that black Alero were there to whisk me off to a place made for just that objective: Ybor City.

We found Rackt at the Tampa Bay Brewing Company, and quickly got caught up while ordering dinner. Conversation steered towards work; I explained my woes, but TK’s professional life was a much different world. The young man, you see, is a certified massage therapist. And, while I’m sure you can envision the benefits that might come from having such a job in Florida, it also leaves him vulnerable to an unlimited amount of jokes involving sexual innuendo. And that is something squarely in Rackt's and my respective wheelhouses.

Me: “Do you ever have to massage hot chicks?”
TK: “Yeah, I massage hot chicks.”
Rackt: “Do you get a boner?”
TK: *flustered* “They can’t SEE it!”

After dinner and a few delicious draughts, we strolled through the streets of Ybor, eventually finding our way to Gaspar’s Grotto. We grabbed seats at the bar on the patio, and drained more draughts while I caught Rackt up on the happenings in Pittsburgh over the seven months since she had last visited. She eventually had to call it an early night, but TK and I were in it for the long haul.

An Ybor bar crowd on a random weeknight doesn’t disappoint. It’s the single malt of people-watching; you just sit back and savor it. And, as we were about to learn, things only get better when the bar is having an open-mic night. There was soon a middle-aged white man—wearing a jean jacket that seemed to have been relieved of its sleeves by a pair of gardening sheers—singing a blues song while a barefoot guy in a tie-dye t-shirt emphatically strummed a guitar. Later, women in burlesque-style heels, garters, and bustiers walked through the crowd handing out fliers to their show while a garage band—and a guy playing bongos—banged out a set. TK and I clinked our draught glasses.

After some time we moved down the street to Doppel Decker. Here we found a much sparser, but younger and more attractive crowd. That included the bartender, a beautiful, petite blonde who looked all of 17. We decided to do shots, and as TK went to order, she walked off towards another customer. Matter-of-factly, TK looked at me and said, “I’m not aggressive at bars.”

When she was back within earshot, I called her over and ordered two shots of whiskey. The bartender informed me, though, that Jager Bombs were buy-two-get-one-free. Hell of a saleswoman, that gal—and the thong peeking out from the back of her low-rise jeans was quite the capable wingman. I ordered up the $20 “bargain”, and gave the third shot to our lovely personal shopper. As she tossed it back, the thought that I had probably just bought and handed alcohol to a 17-year-old briefly crossed my mind.

After finishing our beers, TK and I moved on down 7th Ave., and wandered into The Dog's Bollocks. Count this as the first—but hopefully not the last—time I’ve ever set foot in a soccer bar. Such a thing doesn’t exist in Pittsburgh, to the best of my knowledge; but I wish it did. There were no soccer games that night, and as such no hooliganism. But the atmosphere within that bar was positively engrossing. The bar is dark but inviting; looming but non-threatening. Sitting at a barstool, you don’t feel like you’re sitting in a place of Tampa nightlife so much as you feel like you’re sitting in a child’s treehouse. A treehouse that serves lots and lots of tasty beers.

I marveled at graffiti in the bathroom, and then found a spot at the bar in the backroom with TK, where we ordered 24 oz draughts—a serving size the folks at 5 Bucks Drinkery would probably consider quite adequate. Dog's Bollocks serves these draughts in giant plastic mugs; there may or may not have been such a mug tucked into a thigh pocket of my cargo shorts when I stumbled back into my hotel room that night. I can only imagine a bartender chuckled at me straight-legging it out the door, while he muttered “tourist” and reached into a box of 200 more mugs just like it.

The airport the next afternoon…yeah. Hangovers that take place during air travel are far from new to me, but experience doesn’t stop the room from spinning. Having arrived at the airport about three hours before my flight, I got some lunch into me, followed by some Starbucks, and then set up camp at the gate. Fantasy football on my laptop, Joe Budden on my iPod, and an abundance of Florida’s top export walking past helped me to somehow keep it together. I watched a MILF in a sundress glide through the terminal, past the college girls’ volleyball team that was huddled around an iPad at the next gate, and suddenly remembered: The Ex is from Florida, too.

Nope, I've never learned.

Fuzzy Math

About a month ago, I had a friend visit from out of town. This friend shall remain unnamed, but we will call her Lush, mostly because she is not.

Lush and I had never gone drinking together, but we were looking forward to it. I, obviously, have a fondness for the fermented beverage, and she's from the party town of Vegas, where she has had adventures that surpass anything you've read here. At least in star power. (Defi, when are we gonna get NBA players to costar in one of our stories?)

Anyhow, I was operating under the assumption that Lush is indeed a lush, and thus would match me drink for drink and inspire some adventures that involve NBA players - and their groupies. Alas, I overestimated Lush's drinking capacity.

(She says she never said she was a heavy drinker. I counter that she's always got a story about some time when she was absolutely hammered. We'll call it a draw.)

Lush and I end up at Sloppy Joe's, a beachside bar and restaurant in Treasure Island, on the Gulf coast. It's one of my favorite spots because it's laidback, there's always room to sit outside and watching the sun set while sipping a mojito is pretty tough to top for enjoying life. I've taken dates there, my moms ... hell, I've even gone drinking there solo. Big surprise, I know.

Anyhow, we grab a couple stools at the outside portion of the bar, which was fairly empty. I order a mojito, but the bar was out of fresh mint, which should be illegal. I settle for a Captain and coke while Lush peruses the menu. A middle-aged couple, obviously vacationing, was sitting to our left, and the woman was drinking a "sloppy-sized margarita." Lush decides she wants one of those, only she gets the top-shelf version, with Patron and Grand Marnier. I dub it the Megarita.

The middle-aged woman was maybe an eighth of the way into her drink when Lush got hers. As the afternoon progresses, we end up chatting with the couple - visiting from Ohio - and they turn out to be pretty cool. However, after a while, the woman notices she's killed her drink while Lush is perhaps a quarter of the way through hers. She immediately starts giving Lush a hard time. I, of course, encourage this, since I'm on my second or third drink at that point.

Lush tries to play it off, saying it's her first drink, she's Asian, yada yada yada. The woman gets gangster with it and orders another, then tells Lush she'll probably finish that one before Lush gets through with hers. This lights a fire under Lush, who manages to finish it as the woman hits the halfway mark on her second drink.

However, Lush is already talking about getting a buzz, and how she's got a lot of hard booze in her drink. My skepticism was palpable as I started in on my fifth drink. So she orders a second Megarita, but as she does, she tries to mount a defense of her weak drinking while Middle-Aged Lady and I relentlessly tease her.

"Hey," Lush says to the bartender, "this is a really strong drink, right?" The bartender tries to give her an answer that won't piss her off, but it's obvious he doesn't think she's drinking a mindbender. "OK, but wait," she says. "I've had more to drink than him, right?" She points at me.

The bartender, who came on shift after we'd arrived, says he doesn't know the answer to that question because he doesn't know how many drinks I've had.

"So how much alcohol is in my drink?" she says, ignoring the warning signs of impending ownage. "About four ounces," he says. "And how many are in his?" Lush presses on. "At least two ounces ... maybe two and a half," the bartender replies.

"Ha!" she says, turning to me as I briefly wonder if small animals standing on asphalt ever really comprehend what that rapidly approaching car bumper portends or if they live in blissful ignorance until the thud. "My drink has more alcohol than yours does."

I look at Lush for a moment, wondering just how evil I am. I decide I am not that evil, at least that day.

"Sweetheart ... I've had more than four of these. Do the math."

As realization dawns on her, accompanied by giggles from Ohio people and the bartender, I give myself a mental pat on the back for taking it easy on her. After all, it was only our first time drinking together. She'll learn.