Holiday Seasoned

The last week and a half of December is like a drinker’s March Madness. It ends a long and arduous year; you face seven or eight contests, the last of which is the grandest and most-hyped; then, once that’s over, you start preparing for the next year—recruiting, scouting reports, press junkets…

...Or maybe that’s just me.

I feel that some of my recent posts have been of the long-winded variety, so add, “Wrap that shit up, B!” to my list of New Year’s resolutions. I’ll try to focus on getting right into the meat of my tales and drunken rants this year. If you’ve been visiting this page specifically for those superfluous ramblings, I apologize. And you’re clearly drunk. …Which means you’re also now scratching your head at the word “superfluous”. Salud.


Friday, December 23rd

TK came into town for a day, so we joined him in the South Side for Christmas Eve Eve festivities. Tony, Pakistanimal, TJ, LRG, and I were among those who caught up with the Tampa resident at Mario’s. Most of us, of course, had pregamed in the hour(s) leading up to the get-together. I was enjoying a smooth little buzz myself, and looked forward to methodically building a solid drunk. I didn’t want to rush into things and risk ending up like I did last Christmas Eve Eve (throwing up in a bathroom sink just doesn’t make for as festive of a holiday tradition as you may think).

Shortly after arriving, though, Pak opened a tab with our waitress and asked for a round of shots. When she asked what kind he wanted, he replied, “Surprise us!” What a dick. The waitress came back to the table with Redheaded Sluts; I went from cursing Pak to praising this angel for choosing something so tame. For the next round, she came back with Crown Royal. She was accused of treason. For the third round, she brought out Buttery Nipples. Now I couldn’t tell if she was a traitor or a confidante. Or if she was hitting on us. Or if I was talking to the coat stand.

Our crew soon relocated to Finn McCool’s, where we continued our sloppy antics. We bumped into Hurley, who was up to his own holiday celebrations, and who was so drunk that he couldn’t stop smiling from ear to ear. He looked like a drunk cartoon character. I was rapidly making up ground on him, though; as Pak’s handiwork kicked in, things were becoming fuzzier and fuzzier. Eventually, I was at Jimmy D’s circling the dance floor with Pak, LRG, and Tony, looking for potential baby mamas true love slores. Finding none to our liking (and being that we were each very wobbly), Pak, Tony, and I parted ways with LRG and headed off to our respective comas.


Saturday, December 24th

Hangovers hurt; lying on your couch hungover while watching your fantasy football team lose in the championship game—thanks in part to Tony Romo’s fragile right hand—is excruciating. That pain carried over into the night, as my cousin Jump (along with his family), TD, TJ, and I convened at my mom’s house for Christmas Eve dinner. While everyone else poured glasses of wine, I sipped at a glass of ginger ale, which led to some chastising from TD (who stared at me with a disappointment akin to that of someone watching Santa urinate on their Christmas tree). I would eventually down two cans of Miller Lite after dinner, but that was as close to the battlefield as my wounded body would drag me.


Sunday, December 25th

As per tradition, I drank spiked eggnog while opening gifts with my mother, and then later had a glass or two of wine with dinner. I stopped by Jay Swag’s afterwards to catch the second half of the Bears/Packers game with him and TJ, though his household was a dry one, as per court orders. Back at home later that night, I cracked open the bottle of 12 year old Glenfiddich that my mom gave me. But, on the whole, my drinking on Christmas day was purely light cardio; I barely broke a sweat. Nothing to see here. Nothing at all.

My final gift tally for the holiday, by the way: The bottle of Glenfiddich, an airplane bottle of Jameson, and a bottle of extra-strength aspirin from my dear ol’ mum; tumblers and a bottle of Ketel One from TD; a bottle of Crown Royal from Jump; and a huge cocktail recipe book from TJ. As I said to my mother that night, “I’ve got all of the tools and materials for a home bar, except for the bar itself.”


Monday, December 26th

Mofo was in town, and demanded that I join him, Hurley, T.C., and others in South Side that night. But after the previous several days of booze, food, holiday commotion, and fantasy football heartbreak, I needed a night of chilling at home. Besides, I knew what would be coming in the next few days, so I took a rain check.


Tuesday, December 27th

Since some of us haven’t really seen each other in some time (at least since Esq’s wedding in September, though much longer in some cases), Chief organized a get-together among some of our W&J family. Finn, Genoa, Tony, Dupa, Smashley, Chief, Kim, T-Bags, Armo, Sloku, our boy Milhous, and others caught up with each other while polishing off liter steins of Hofbrauhaus’ various biers. We would eventually move to The Claddagh to finish the night, and then, well…Then I browned out and came to once again while watching TV in my place. Apparently all of the German and Irish elixirs detonated my central nervous system right about the time I got to my car. I’m not proud of this, mind you. Damn those Europeans. [Note: Just this morning I took a look at the shirt I had been wearing that night; large beer stains ran from top to bottom across the front of it. It seems that, in addition to my memory of my drive home, the European Union owes me a Tommy Hilfiger polo, too.]


Wednesday, December 28th

I met up with Pak and our friend Ruby at Rivers around 8:30 that night. We bs’d over a few beers at the bar and then moved to a craps table. I watched them play for 15 minutes or so, trying in vain to figure out how the hell you play the game. Soon I decided, though, that my time and money would be better served in the poker room. I found Esq at a 1-3 table and joined him, playing for a few hours. For the record, I was fairly card-dead, and never really got anything going. My night ended when some donkey sucked out 6s-up against my wired Qs. Felted and sober, I headed home and poured myself a few Crown & Cokes to ease my pain.


Thursday, December 29th

I originally had dinner plans with Steph and others, but they were cancelled when the woman of honor had to scrap her travel plans and stayed in NYC. Thankfully, Armo reminded me via text that on Tuesday several of us had asked him to hold a bar night at his house. I joined Finn, T-Bags, and Dupa in Armo’s man cave to watch sports—college bowl games and the Pens/Flyers game—while eating pizza and drinking copious amounts of beer. A night of low-key, low-dough, highly-fattening, and highly-inebriated fun with my peoples. Basically, a snapshot of the holiday season.


Friday, December 30th

The day being Entertainer’s 25th birthday, Shannon planned a party for her boo at Picsi’s in Munhall. Pak, Tony, TJ, and I each made an appearance, and got twisted while delighting in the Munhallian exchange rate. My tab, which contained a round of shots and various rounds of drinks, came out to $25 (had we been in the South Side, for example, that same bill would have been nearly twice as much).

Pak, Tony, and I headed back to Shady Grove around midnight. As soon as I walked in, I had a Long Island Iced Tea in my hand; I sensed doom for me and my consciousness. We ran into my favorite Grove waitress, “Lil Mo”, who was off duty and off-her-ass drunk. When Pak made a joke to tease her, she slurred back, “Fuck you, motherfucker! I’ll fuckin…suck your dick! Wait…no…that’s not what I meant.” While the rest of us cracked up, she slowly caught up to what she had just said and began laughing as well. Though it was just a flub, and she obviously had no intention of following through on her “threat”, Pak still took it as an ego boost. Suffices to say, Lil Mo is now his favorite Grove waitress too.


Saturday, December 31st

The Championship Game—also known as New Year’s Eve—was played out at the house that TJ and TD rent. The place was filled with guests, many of who (such as yours truly) jumped on the beer pong table in the garage. The table was draped in a Captain Morgan shower curtain, and the beer being poured into the twelve cups on top of it was from the keg of Sam Adams Winter Ale on the back porch. Beer pong with Sam Adams…ohhhh, us. TD passed out Jell-O shots as well as Fluffed Vodka shots, and no one even considered the possibility that we all wouldn’t blackout. When the ball dropped, I popped the cork on my bottle of Moet and got my New Year’s kiss from Belle—not a bad way to start a year. I passed my bottle around, and tried some of TD’s, which was a special 2002 bottle of Moet. God I hope the rest of 2012 is as ballin’ as the first four hours of it was.

I awoke mummified in a sleeping bag on the living room floor the next morning. As I gathered my belongings, I surveyed my surroundings and typed the following into my Droid:

New Year's Eve is a microcosm of a drinker's year: everything you could ever want will come and leave you, all before your eyes.

And you don't want to look at anyone you were drinking with the night before. At all.

My 2012 is perfectly summarized by what sits before me: a molested bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label. People were doing shots of it last night. It was like watching Miss America get raped on stage.

That passage, and the fact that I was still drunk until about 3 pm that day, is all I need to say about the quality of the party. And, for that matter, of the close of 2011. Now it’s on to 2012. Chiefapalooza, St. Patty’s Day, the Pirates’ Home Opener, and Brewski Fest loom large in the approaching months.

Time to start going through those scouting reports.

Crazy Legs

One Friday night a few months ago, I decided to take a break from the heavy drinking. Even though some of my friends—including TJ, Jay Swag, and others—were supposed to be starting the weekend off with a happy hour on the North Shore, I chose to stay on the sidelines. I went to Rivers instead to play cards and work on inflating my bankroll. The night went well enough that I clocked out early; not long after midnight I found myself at home, lying on my couch and watching Chappelle’s “Killin’ Them Softly” as I slowly drifted asleep.

When my phone rang around twenty after one, I expected it to be one of my drunken friends busting my balls for not being out boozing with the rest of them. That, or Jamie Chung was in town and wanted me to come visit her in her hotel suite.

…so yeah, it was probably the drunk-friend-harassment thing.

The name that appeared on my screen was that of Mitch Canada. Now, understand that Mitch rarely calls me. I could probably count on one hand the number of phone calls I had received from him before that night, and there haven’t been any since. Mitch calling me after 1 a.m. on a Friday night wasn’t just unusual, it was downright alarming. And when I picked up, the tone of his voice didn’t offer any reassurance.

In exasperated, slightly impatient words, Mitch laid out the situation for me: Jay Swag had been arrested on a DUI charge. Yayy… The police had him in a holding cell in the West End; if no one picked him up before 2 a.m., they’d be sending him over to county, where he—and his suddenly vulnerable anal virginity—would have to stay until at least Monday morning. Mitch and “Courtney” (a female friend of theirs that had been out with the boys that night) were, of course, eager to get Swag home before the deadline. But everyone they knew was either out of town, asleep, or too drunk to drive down there. Everyone, that is, but one guy. Yayy…

I got the station address and information from Mitch, and assured him I could be there before 2. A thought came over me, though: It was technically Saturday morning by then, but…that Friday had been April 1st.

Me: “Mitch, if this is some kind of stupid April Fools’ prank, I swear to god…”
Mitch: “I promise you, man, it’s not a prank. This is real. [Swag] is really in jail.”

I arrived at the station around a quarter to 2. I thought about waiting outside for another ten minutes, just to make Swag sweat it out a little more, but my benevolent side prevailed. As I signed the paperwork, I heard his voice from the other side of the secured door, as an officer gave him a final admonishment. When they opened the door, a blinking, still-drunk Swag shuffled out. The officer unlocked his cuffs, and Swag looked at me like a child who knows he’s screwed up but really just wants a hug to be reassured that his dad still loves him.

As we walked to the car, Swag thanked me with every drop of gratitude in him. I told him it was ok; I knew he would’ve done the same for me in a heartbeat. I asked what exactly had happened; he sank into the passenger seat of my car and gave me the entire story from the top…

He had begun the night with the North Shore happy hour, as planned. When drinks returned to their normal prices, he, Mitch, and Courtney decided to relocate their shit show to Rumshakers in the South Side, Swag’s second home. Shots and drinks were ordered, and shots and drinks were drunk, over and over and over. By around 12, the three of them decided they were sufficiently sloppy, and that they should return to Mitch and Swag’s Mt. Washington home.

Here’s where it got dicey. Swag had been the driver earlier in the night, chauffeuring the other two around in the shiny ‘08 Mercedes C-Class that he had just purchased only two weeks earlier. Swag doesn’t come from money, and prior to that car he had been driving a 20 year old Pontiac that seemed to be begging to be put out of its misery. Taking chances with such a valuable new possession was not something he was up for. He decided a taxi was the way to go.

While Mitch and Courtney waited in the bar, Swag walked outside and tried to flag down a passing cab…for all of five minutes. Then, his patience thinned by alcohol much as his blood was, he began reexamining his situation. The drive to their place was short—barely five minutes. Catching a cab on Carson St. some Friday nights is a frustration only understood by Cubs fans and Sarah Palin’s fact-checkers. And there was a chance he might be able to get something going with Courtney that night. And he was driving a Mercedes…

Swag made his way to his car, several blocks away. He got in, started it up, looked up and down the street, and carefully pulled out of his parking spot. Five seconds later, as he neared a stop sign, police lights began flashing in his rearview. The typical response in this situation is to pull over to the side of the road and resign yourself to beating the rap. But this is Jay Swag; he’s anything but “typical” when he’s drunk. Two thoughts popped into his head:

1. If charged, this would be his second DUI (he received one while in college), which meant “bye-bye license”;
2. In high school he was an all-star on the track team.

Swag gunned it, speeding around the corner and to the next stop sign before the cop could react. He slammed on the brakes, screeching to a stop along the curb. He then hopped out of the car and bolted on foot into a series of townhouse complexes like a white, middle-class reenactment of “Juice”.

Kids, don’t try this at home.

In what might arguably be the craziest piece of this tale, though, his plan actually worked. He soon shook the officer chasing him. Eventually, Swag found himself lying on the ground amid the thick shrubbery that adorned one of the townhouses, listening to police as they swarmed the area. Squad cars came and went, the voices of officers and police radios grew nearer and then more distant; but no one knew where he was.

His impatience, however, was about to once again get the best of him. Swag had been lying in hiding for all of ten minutes when he decided that things had quieted down enough for him to make it to his car again undetected. [Now, obviously, this was a ridiculous idea. Every member of our crew, when hearing the story for the first time, asked why he didn’t think to escape on foot and report the car stolen. The question is an unintentional riddle though; the answer is that he simply wasn’t thinking.] He had gotten less than a block from his hiding spot when police spotted him and converged, drawing their weapons and yelling, “BLUE SWEATSHIRT—FREEZE!!”

Now, anyone who has ever had a run-in with the Pittsburgh Police will tell you, 75% of them are dickheads. The prototypical cocky, tough-behind-a-badge-but-a-pussy-otherwise jerks that would sooner tase and beat a civilian than acknowledge his civil rights. Despite the misfortune—deserved though it may have been—of getting arrested, Swag was still incredibly lucky, in that he got arrested by one of the 25% of the force who are actually decent human beings. In fact, this officer was so cool that he decided to look the other way on the “Avoiding Apprehension” charge, which is a felony. He also let Swag in on a little detail: He had only tried to pull him over because Swag didn’t have his headlights on. Having only had the Benz for two weeks, Swag was still unfamiliar with some of the controls; when he got into the car, he had only turned on the parking lights, not the full low beams. “If you had just pulled over, I was going to tell you to flip your lights on,” the cop said. “If you’d done that, I would’ve let you go. But then you ran… Why did you run?!”

When I echoed those sentiments, Swag responded, “I knew I could outrun him. No one’s going to catch me in a footrace.” I mentioned he was still drunk at that point, right?

In fact, he was still nearly blacked out. At the station he had blown a .23, almost three times the legal limit. When we got back to his house, he walked straight into his kitchen. I heard the refrigerator open and close, and he returned to the living room, cracking open a can of Four Loko along the way. Then he plopped himself down on a recliner and recounted the tale for Courtney, who had been asleep on the couch when we arrived. And then, even though it was well after 3 a.m., he started calling up a few friends that had gotten DUIs in the past to tell them about his night.

The next morning TJ came by and took him down to the South Side so he could try to locate his car. They found it just where he’d ditched it—with a freshly slashed tire, compliments of the Pittsburgh PD. As he and TJ set about putting on the spare, a voice called out from a few doors down the street.

“[Swag]? What’s up?” It was one of his buddies, standing in front of his home. Swag could have simply run and hid there the night before.

Making it All Better

Well, this past weekend didn’t turn out quite like I had hoped. Zach’s poker game got cancelled by his girlfriend, so no easy money. The Penguins forgot that you need to score goals to win hockey games. And Sunday I suffered through one of the worst nights of beer pong that I have ever had the distinct embarrassment of being involved in. Luckily there was plenty of alcohol to wash away my sorrow in each case.

Friday I decided to stay in, and put down several glasses of whiskey to ease my itching check-raising hand; Sunday night I drank enough beer to almost make me forget that I was even losing my beer pong games (I think at one point I was laughingly taunting my opponents like DeNiro in “Raging Bull”). Saturday I was at Sports Rock, enduring the Pens’ sudden impotence like a jilted lover, telling myself over and over, “It’s not my fault, it's not my fault.” Around the same time that they were packing it in—sometime early in the third period—I discovered that bottles of Miller Lite cost $4.25, but mixed drinks cost $4.75. Emotional scarring (from watching my team squeal like a pig) coupled with some simple economics meant I was suddenly double fisting bourbon & cokes. Then a random stranger, probably equally unnerved by the hockey game, gave me a free bottle of Hoegaarden (he had ordered it for someone who had abruptly left), which was about to come in handy.

Of the 16 or 17 people in our party, just over half were large, drunk males (such as myself), some of whom posses a special ability to get kicked out of places (such as myself). So of course, the smart money was on the 5’2” blonde sorority girl amongst us to be the one to “m-f” the bartender while flipping him off with both hands, prompting him to call in two bouncers and three city cops to escort us to the door. Here’s where experience pays off: measuring the amount of time I had left in that particular establishment for the night, and comparing it to the amount of time it was going to take to trek to the next watering hole, I discreetly slipped the bottle of Hoegaarden into my pocket, and then made a show of chugging my bourbon & coke. Once we were outside and the cops had walked off, I pulled the bottle out and calmly sipped as we headed up the street. One of the girls turned to say something, did a doubletake, and said, “Where’d you get that?”

“Come on—I thought you knew me?”

Casino Drinks

Everyone can calm down. Please stop rioting in the streets. Please put the pitchforks and torches down. We’re still here. "On the Rocks" has gathered a few cobwebs during a brief hiatus over the past week or two. TJ’s been busy taking care of strippers (hint: there's a double meaning here), and I’ve been busy between work and family commitments. It’s affected my opportunities to drink, too. This, in turn, affects my ability to post stories about getting penises drawn on my face. It’s a domino effect, really.

And now TJ’s out in L.A. for a few days. And Kev (a.k.a. The Hero) lives in L.A. And I’m stuck in Pittsburgh, with snow, ice, and slush. A few minutes ago I received a text message:

From: TJ
Subject: I’m in LA, and you’re not.

I hate him.

Last Friday, my friend Zach and I made the trip to Mountaineer Casino, in West Virginia. We left Pittsburgh (and civilization) around 7 pm, and after a short stop in Weirton for a delicious home-cooked meal (gracias, Erica), we trekked through more snow and ice and got to the casino around 11 pm.

I was there for business—poker is money, and money ain’t fun and games—so my drinking was going to be limited. Typically at casinos in the United States, if you’re gambling, you’re drinking for free. West Virginia, however, is another world. I went to Wheeling Island in Wheeling, WV last year, and my friend Chad warned me before I got there that you had to pay for drinks. So when the cocktail waitress walked up to my table at Mountaineer, I expected more of the same. I ordered a plain Coke [let me stop here and say (1.) I was playing poker, (2.) I was the driver that night, and (3.) I had drank a couple of beers with dinner—in other words, don’t judge me], and when she returned with it I asked, "How much?" She looked at me like I was speaking Romanian and said, “There’s no charge.” No charge? Could it be, that I was in a real casino? The next time a waitress came past, I ordered a Jack & Coke. I was still playing poker, I was still the driver, but…it was free, right?

No. “That’ll be $4.” West Virginia. Normally, I would be enthusiastic about a Jack & Coke only costing $4. Instead I was mildly annoyed. They had gotten my hopes up, however briefly. My annoyance changed into puzzlement an hour or so later, when Zach (who had busted out and was touring the building instead of buying back in) told me that he stopped at the bar, and they charged him $3.50 for a bottle of Miller Lite.

Are you kidding me? A bottle of light domestic beer costs only $0.50 less than a drink made with semi-top shelf bourbon? On the drive home we talked about this incredulously, until a thought suddenly dawned on me: The casino is trying to tempt players into buying mixed drinks. They want you to get drunker, and therein more likely to blow your hard-earned money at their tables. Tricky bastards. I’m sure this thinking has a lot to do with real casinos providing your booze for free.

So I warn you, fellow inebriation enthusiasts: don’t fall for the trap. Try your best to show restraint in the face of free or low-priced liquor at casinos. Look at it this way: the less you drink at the tables, the better your chances of winning big money. And that big money can buy a lot of booze and fun.

Or plane tickets to L.A.