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Monday, 12 October 2009

A definitive list of all the mistakes I made Friday night

-Mixed Sparks with 5-hour energy

You all know what "Sparks" is, right? It used to contain both alcohol and energy drink mix, and it used to be awesome. But then a bunch of really lame-ass states and child advocate organizations decided that the concept of alcohol mixed with an energy drink was too much for children to handle, and the youths of America would be unable to stop themselves from drinking this amazing beverage, and moreover, the police, liquor store owners, and parents would also be helpless in the face of it's massive powers, therefore they sued the company that manufactured this once-awesome beverage. Instead of being burdened with the cost of a massive lawsuit, the company that made Sparks decided just to remove the caffeine and Taurine, and all the other stuff that made you wired when you drank Sparks. Now it is just a sugary malt liquor drink that tastes kinda funky (sorta like a Red Bull with a 40 in it.... but again, no Red Bull benefits).

So I decided to try this new Sparks and see if it was any good without the caffeine and stuff in it... and then I remembered that the only reason to drink Sparks was because the caffeine and energy cocktail kept you from passing out early, so you could party all night despite probably needing to pass out and/or have your stomach pumped. Except I remembered this after I bought a 6 pack of it, so I was stuck with a 6 pack of the non-caffeinated Sparks.........until Charles and I came up with the brilliant idea of adding our own caffeine mixture to it. My first attempt was awful... just awful. I basically mixed a half can of Sparks with a half can of generic Red Bull, and then added some additional liquor, which tasted... horrible.

Then Charles got the brilliant idea to add that uber-powerful energy product, "5-hour energy" to the Sparks, thus using as little liquid and additional sugar as possible to the already sugary 16 ounce Sparks, but still supercharging the drink. Well, it didn't taste great, but..... let's just say, I drank a shitload more beers than I ever should have been able to without my body collapsing into toxic shock. At the rate I was consuming beers and shots, I should have passed out at around midnight at the latest (we started drinking at 7pm, did the Sparks/5hr at 8:45 or so) but instead, I went until a solid 3a.m. and wasn't ready to go to sleep when I arrived at my final destination for the night. Great idea Charles, because if there's one thing everyone wants to happen when I am in drunken-asshole mode, it's for me to not pass out prematurely.

-Tequila Shots.

Listen, I do tequila shots one night a year. One night only. Let me repeat that again: ONE FUCKING NIGHT PER CALENDAR YEAR. That's it. Tequila does not belong in my body. I do not belong with tequila in my body. If you read the last entry, you know I broke this rule at the college party I was at a month or so ago, but that was Patron.... I feel fine with breaking my one night a year rule for Patron since it is of superior quality to most tequila. But for the most part, I stay away from tequila, unless of course it is offered as the only beverage allowed to be consumed at a party, and it must be consumed in one way only- in Body Shot form.

But Friday night, my friend screwed me. A word on my friend, first. My friend is Ben, Ben is quite a bit older than I am. He gets a little self-conscious about his age, so we won't get into how much older, but suffice it to say, he's married-with-kids-who-are-older-than-my-little-sisters type old. Ben is the CEO and owner of a company he started a while back, so he's not like a poor bum off the street who hangs out with 26 year old and younger kids, Ben's deal is more like, he's fucking crazy and parties harder than anyone I know, regardless of age. And that's why we love him.

I was able to get Ben to come out and party with Me, Charles, Rianna, and the college girls from the last entry, the now-infamous Buffy and Sammy. Ben was a little bit reluctant, especially at the idea that we would be partying in a dorm room at Buffy and Sammy's school. Somehow Rianna and I convinced him that it would be a good idea for him to be there, and he brought a friend of similar age to himself along with him, so that he wouldn't be the only person over 26 at the party. As part of their welcome package, a little thank you for being invited to the party, Ben and friend brought a bottle of tequila with them. Ben and friend either did not know about my rule as far as tequila one night only, or did not care. Either way, at Ben's insistence, I drank plenty of tequila for this year and next. Also, Ben generally keeps bourbon in his truck. Ben drove us (me, Charles, Rianna, and friend) to the party. Thus bourbon got consumed on the way to the party as well. So let's call that a conservative estimate of 4 shots worth of liquor, mostly tequila with the bourbon in the truck on the way to the party making up about 1 - 1.5 shots worth. And the Sparks/5 hr concoction before we left. And

-Drank an excessive number of beers

Like I said earlier, I started drinking around 7. A beer after my run. Another beer in the shower. Another beer after the shower with dinner. And a black/tan. This was all well before we even left for the party, where I played beruit, fuck the dealer, and various other card/table games that required beer drinking. You might be wondering (but probably not) where I am getting the money for all of this beer, since I am under-employed right now and have student loans coming due, in addition to the fact that I just bought, registered and insured a motor vehicle in addition to my car. Well the deal is, a friend of mine operates a bar, and he frequently gives me all kinds of beer. I jokingly told him the story behind how Charles and I killed a case of beer in one night a few weeks back (the joke was, we had a lot of help), so he not-so-jokingly gave me a case and a half of beer to replace it with. For a while there, the entire bottom shelf of our fridge was all beer, and half the top shelf was beer/Sparks. So, of course, I made a plan to kill the beer, reclaiming our fridge. The plan was to bring the beer with us to a party at Buffy and Sammy's place, and have Buffy, Sammy, Ben, friend, Rianna, and other miscellaneous college kids help us drink it all. Oh did I mention it was all in glass bottles except for the cans of Guiness? That made for some interesting transportation issues, but we figured it out. The transportation issues came from the fact that, in addition to the party in the dorm, we had plans to do some urban disc golf around the college campus. Naturally, we needed to bring beer with us, but you can't exactly be carrying around a case-worth of glass bottles in a backpack, and even if you split them up, they still clink together in a backpack, potentially breaking. We ended up working through those issues just fine, we had drank so many of the beers at the party that I basically just put the remaining beers side by side in my briefcase (yes briefcase) with no problems. The more difficult issue was how to stop me from smashing the empty glass bottles towards the end of the night because I was drunk and it seemed like an awesome idea. Someone figured out how to resolve that issue too, though I'm not sure who/how.

-Drank most of a 40oz bottle of malt liquor ("Private Stock" to be exact)

40's have really lost their appeal to me. Please, don't crucify me for saying that, but I think it has become the reality I swore would never happen. They taste pretty shitty, they get warm before you can kill the whole thing, and let's be honest, I don't feel the need to drink that much that rapidly any more. But, before we left for the party, Charles thought it would be an outstanding idea to throw an extra 40 into my briefcase (the one I would later use to transport beer on the urban disc golf course). This was one of the 40's from before, one of the ones I brought to Buffy and Sammy's party back in August, but decided they were too drunk to handle 40's, so I saved it and threw it back in my fridge for a later date.

That later date was Friday, my friends. This is what I sipped on while playing Beruit. And Fuck the dealer. And other games, basically double fisting at times, 40 in one hand, game-related beverage/shot of tequila in the other. I say I drank most of it because I'm pretty sure... though not totally sure, that Ben heard me complaining about how warm and gross it had gotten by the time I reached the last 20% of it, and then grabbed it out of my hands and chugged it, spiking the empty bottle on the ground as he finished. I'm pretty sure that happened..... not 100% sure though. At this point I was several shots/beers deep, not to mention I had drank most of the 40, so I was noticeably wasted and beyond the point of any sort of clear recollection. I am 100% sure some glass non-beer bottle got spiked right before we left for urban golf.... it was either the 40 or the tequila. Probably both.

-Dumped a can of Guinness over my friend's head because she was "pissing me off" (i.e. for no particular reason at all)

We eventually left the dorms to play golf. In the mud/rain. I knew it was going to be rainy and that we would be playing golf that night so I wore work boots and a hooded sweatshirt, both of which were soaked and covered with mud by the end of the night. Once on the golf course, I was thoroughly trashed, but I was also in charge of distributing the remaining beers, which amounted to only a few bottles and my private stash of Guinness. I'll be honest, I don't remember much of the golf course. I remember being there and not doing horribly given my state of mind, but that's about it, it's like I have a general idea that golf happened, but I remember very few specifics.

I distributed the remaining beers... mostly to myself, throughout the course, and eventually started smashing the empty bottles, against walls, on the ground, against trees.... yeah. Bad idea to leave me in charge of empty glass bottles when I've been drinking heavily. Eventually underneath all of the empty glass bottles, I reached the private stash of Guinness, which I had lined up sideways underneath all the other beers, at the bottom of my briefcase. I had forgotten to distribute it to those non-college golf players who preferred Guinness over the crappy bottled stuff that I had brought (note: not all of the bottled stuff was crappy, but Ben, Rianna, Charles, and Friend had drank the vast majority of the good stuff prior to going to the college party, because those college kids aren't yet worthy of the better beers).

When we were about done with the golf, I was way too drunk to do anything intelligent, so basically as soon as I realized I still had beer on my person, I grabbed a Guinness and cracked it open as we walked back to the dorms to finish the night. Rianna and I were the last ones in, I think.... you know, I don't really remember what I was doing outside, I was probably being stupid, and Rianna, like the true friend that she is, probably had to reel me in and try to contain me as we waited to be let back into the dorms. But then, being myself and taking my friends' benevolence for granted every chance I get, I decided that Rianna was not quite soaked enough from being outside for the past hour + playing disc golf in the drizzling rain, so I up-ended the can of Guinness directly over her head as she struggled to both restrain me in my drunken state and work the intercom at the front of the dorm to get us inside.

I went for a long motorcycle ride yesterday with a friend. We both stopped at a car dealership that was closed for the day to look at the new Camaros. During the time we were resting there, I told him the above story, and the situation with myself and Rianna, how she takes care of me while I'm drunk, lets me crash at her place so I don't have to get a cab after the T is closed, and remains my friend despite my frequent douche-baggery. After I told him the part about dumping Guinness on her head while she was trying to get us back into the dorm, he looked up from a longing gaze at a metallic orange 2010 Camaro SS, and, looking confused, asked, "How do you pull this kind of shit off without getting slapped?" My response was, "I never said I didn't get slapped."

Monday, 31 August 2009

I Partied All Night With College Kids And All I Got was Punched in the Face

Alright listen, I hang around with college kids sometimes, particularly this post-bar exam summer. I met a couple of BU girls through summer ultimate, and they are cool shit, and apparently I somehow charmed them into hanging out with me outside of ultimate. Either that or they saw me as a potential booze supplier, since they are both under the age of 21; regardless, I’ll be honest with you, it’s been a pretty good time. We started out just doing post-ultimate hanging out, i.e. chillin’ with the team after games for a few beers and then hitting up the local pond for late night adult swim, and eventually it turned into me getting an invite to full blown college parties. Granted, these kids are mostly 19 and 20 years old, so they can’t drink worth a damn, but, but you know something, many of my law school friends can’t drink worth a damn either. Not that I even have any law school friends anymore, since I lost the majority of them in the divorce settlement.

Am I at the stage in my life where it is acceptable, or even commendable to be hanging out with much younger women? Like at some point older guys are always bragging proudly about how young their girlfriends are, I just don’t know if I’m there yet, or if I’m still at the stage where it’s kinda just sketch to be hanging around with a bunch of college girls who are fully 6 years younger than myself.

Right where were we? Oh yeah, partying all night with college kids. So the past several weeks I’ve been out at college parties with these girls, Buffy and Sammy, whom I met through summer ultimate. A few weeks back Buffy had a small gathering at her apartment in Brookline, just for a few friends and what not, nothing major. This was my first invite to hang out with the BU girls fully outside the realm of an ultimate team event, so maybe she intentionally invited me to a little thing first, just to see how I’d act, you know, like a trial period before I got invited to the real deal. Based on the fact that I was invited out again, I’d say I did alright. In fact, I think it’s safe to say I rocked the house at that first gathering. I brought a cooler full of margarita mix (everything included, tequila already mixed in at a superb ratio, triplesec, salt, ice, and cups) that I needed to get rid of because it was taking up too much room in my fridge, and let’s just say, it went over smashingly. Oh and also, I brought a pint of Jack Daniel’s, because, I mean, the margarita mix was plenty alcoholic (my friend who owns a bar in my home town made it for me, he said he put a bottle and a half of tequila in the 2 or so gallons of total mix), but when I roll up to a trial party where I know my future partying with these kids is on the line, I go all out.   That’s who the fuck I am. Rianna, another friend from ultimate was there for my trial period (she’s a recent college grad, another ultimate buddy who I’ve known for a few years, I told her to come along to make sure I didn’t get myself into too much trouble with these BU girls), as was Henry, another young college kid who goes to school in NY, but was home in MA for the summer and played summer league with us.
So basically, the trial party was a slam dunk. I played bartender for the night, serving up margaritas, which everyone loved, and the J.D. was just an extra kick in the pants that nobody really needed, but everyone appreciated. Buffy passed the fuck out on the floor of her own house because she was too drunk to make it to bed, (I would later, much later indeed, pick her up and drag/carry her to her bed, perhaps foolishly, because there weren’t enough beds to go around, I should have left her to the floor and stolen her bed.... oh well, next time), Rianna and I both puked our brains out and then passed out on the floor of Buffy’s room (Rianna insists that I spooned her in the middle of the night.... my opinion: she just wishes I did...), I’m pretty sure Henry puked too, but in any event, Henry passed out on a couch in the middle of the living room while the party was dying out, but still occurring. The few remaining party-goers would eventually get bored of playing Beruit and other table/cup games, and subsequently sat around Henry’s passed-out body to play cards on the couch that he was crashed on. Quite a sight, people playing cards, with a tall lanky red-head passed out in the middle of them. Sammy was the only smart one of the group of us, she stayed awake long enough to sober up and then set up a sleeping bag in the living room after the party was fully extinguished. I think it’s fair to assume that my trial period ended in success. I partied hard all night with Sammy last weekend, just to keep myself sharp for future college parties (and ended up not getting to bed until 6am), but the main event was really last night.

Last night was Buffy’s final night in her apartment that she had been subletting for the summer, same location as my trial party. There was literally no furniture. There was a folding chair, a desk that was being used for Beruit/flip cup, and that was about it. The kitchen had a built in table area and an island around the stove, but that was the extent of the apartment that wasn’t open space. To this party, I brought the following: 30 racks of PBR (x2), 40 oz bottles of malt liquor, various brands (x4), Rianna and Henry (x1 each). When I showed up Buffy and Sammy were already quite tuned up. The PBR was unloaded and distributed as fast as I could carry it into the place, and I hid the 40s so that Rianna and I could drink the ones we brought for ourselves and decide who to distribute the other two to without college kids stealing them out from under us. I had actually brought 4 thinking that Sammy and Buffy would each want one, but, again, they were already shithouse drunk, so after a short command conference with Rianna, we decided not to give them 40s, as I did not want to be personally responsible for these 20 year old kids dying face down on a toilet, hence the other two 40s were to remain hidden in the fridge until further inquiry.

I only drink straight tequila one night a year, and last night wasn’t that night. Buffy and a few of her totally wasted friends tried as hard as they could to get me to take a straight tequila shot, but listen, I’m half a decade older than most of these kids, there is no way 4 drunk college kids are going to peer pressure me into taking a shot of tequila, especially when it’s shitty tequila in a plastic bottle. I eventually made a deal with them- one of them had a bottle of Patron, I said I’d relent to their pressure if they gave me a shot of the Patron instead of the shitty plastic bottle off-color crap. Patron isn’t even half bad, and most of the kids there wouldn’t know good tequila if it threw lime juice in their eye and punched them in the face, so the kid who had the Patron was impressed that I even knew what it was. Thus I did a tequila shot, contrary to my usual rule of only doing straight tequila in body shot form, one night per calendar year.

I did not relent to peer pressure when it came to taking a “Man-shot” (aka a “stunt-man”). For those of you who are not familiar with man-shots, basically, it’s like a regular tequila shot, but a lot worse. I’ve done it one time before (when I did it I was told it was called a stunt-man), and I have no intention of ever doing it again. The deal is, you pour a shot of tequila, place it on the bar or wherever for temporary safe-keeping, then you snort salt up your nose, squirt lime juice in your eye, have a friend punch you in the face, and then take the shot. I joke around that the tequila is the worst part because I hate tequila, but seriously, try snorting salt some time. If you tell me your nose feels fine the next day, you didn’t really do it. So, having had this experience in the past, and not feeling any need to prove my masculinity to a bunch of young drunk college kids, I declined to do a man-shot last night, in spite of very heavy pressure by Buffy, Sammy, and the kid who brought the Patron. The kid who brought the Patron did two man-shots, and by the second one, which he and a friend did simultaneously, he kinda forgot what a man shot is really about. See, you punch the person after they squirt the lime in their eyes, but you aren’t really trying to level them, you’re just trying to sting’em a little. The generally accepted rule is that you give them a “6-inch punch,” meaning you hold your fist 6 inches away from the persons face and punch them without winding up or anything. Well, the Patron kid left that rule by the wayside and destroyed his friend, put his shoulders and hips into the punch, leaving his friend reeling backwards and falling over. Buffy and Sammy also did man shots with each other, and Buffy pulled the same thing as the Patron kid did, smashing Sammy way too hard in the mouth (I took a video of this on my Blackberry, contact me if you want to see it/don’t believe me). Sammy was quite unhappy afterwards, she said it was the salt burning inside her nose, but, I saw how hard Buffy clocked her, I wouldn’t be surprised if she has a fat lip today.

Of course, having not fulfilled her bloodlust by smashing Sammy in the face during the man shot, Buffy came after me next, saying I needed to do a man shot or she’d punch me in the face. I told her there was no way in hell I was stupid enough to do a man shot, so she took a couple of swings at me. Henry, who was there the entire time, stepped in to my aid, standing between me and Buffy while Buffy was swinging wildly in my direction. Eventually, Buffy got wise to the fact that she couldn’t full-on tackle me with Henry standing as a barrier between us, so she did like a roundhouse punch, over Henry’s shoulder, directly into my unexpecting face.   Right in the tongue holster, between the cheek bone and the jaw line. It’s not like I’ve never been punched in the face before, but I think this is the first time I’ve been legitimately punched in the face by a girl, and it was not like a joking around type of punch, this was more like a haymaker. No bruise or anything, but my face is still a little tender today. But the violence wouldn’t end there, not for me at least.

Later on someone was joking about me getting punched in the face by Buffy, and I asked Rianna if she would ever punch me in the face. Rianna replied that she probably would not, but she’d be happy to slap me in the face. This got the surrounding party-goers excited, thinking they were going to see me get lit up by a girl once again, so the few kids who were around and heard the conversation then began to encourage her to slap me. To her credit, Rianna, being a good friend, backed down, telling the anxious adolescents that she couldn’t just slap me for no reason, because that would be just wrong. So of course, thinking Rianna didn’t have it in her to actually slap me in the face, I replied, “Well what if I told everyone your vagina smells like seafood? Would that be reason enough to slap me?” Turns out, she did have it in her to slap me, pretty much right as I was finishing that sentence. I had just been pulverized by Buffy a few minutes earlier, so the slap was pretty mild by comparison, but any other night, it would have been top of the highlight reel material.

Of course, this was not the last episode of violence in the night either. And listen, I wasn’t even that drunk, I had done a shot of tequila, some pre-party drinks at my house that I concocted out of Sparks, generic Red Bull, and Triplesec (turned out so shitty that Rianna wouldn’t even finish hers, so I went ahead and drank mine and then finished the one I made for her as well, not because I liked it by any means, but rather because I refuse to waste alcohol), and most of a 40 at that point. I was drunk, sure, but far from belligerent. But seriously, these college kids, some of them just don’t know how to handle their alcohol. And one of them in particular decided to show everyone how tough he was by trying to twist my nipple. Write this down, all you young males who wish to establish dominance over me: Keep it among your stupid little sex starved friends, cuz I don’t stand for that kind of shit. This kid, the one who tried to grab my teat and make it turn purple, I had met him once before at the party I was at with Sammy last week (the one that went until well past 5am), he’s not a bad guy, he was even nice enough to give me a ride to Watertown at 5:30 in the morning, but I definitely got a certain vibe from him, like a male competitive testosterone I-have-to-show-everyone-I’m-better-than-you type of vibe. I could be totally off base here, but that was just the vibe I got from him last week, and I continued to feel it coming from him at this week’s party. It wasn’t even anything specific he said or did, you know, just a feeling, and the kid’s a tall, lanky, goofy looking mofo, so I basically wrote him off as unthreatening at best, and didn’t think too much about him until at some point, late in the night, after Buffy decked me and shortly after Rianna slapped me, the kid lunges at me and grabs at my nipple, twisting it just barely before I was able to react. And I responded how anyone would have responded in that situation: I shoved him off me and then kicked him square in the nuts.    Alright alright, before you start judging me for kicking another man in the johnson, can you please let me explain just a little? I did kick him square in the nuts, I admit it, but I wasn’t really trying to score a direct hit, I just wanted him to back the fuck up off me. And this wasn’t like a field-goal style wind-up and then fire the cannon type of kick either, it was more like I extended my leg nice and easy and then pushed towards him with my foot. I thought I might tag him in the junk just barely, figuring he’d see my foot coming at his crotch and make a reasonable attempt to move out of the way. But the dumbass was drunk, made a truly feeble attempt to save his shit from certain doom, and thus the tip of my Converse caught him pretty much dead on the end of his boulder-sack. He hit the ground almost immediately. I didn’t even kick at him that hard, but, I dunno, either he’s a huge wuss, or I got him in the nuts good. He was kneeling in a sort of fetal position for a good several minutes, I kept assuring everyone I didn’t kick him that hard, but after a while, I mean, he was really hamming up the fact that he was in pain, I had to apologize to the kid. I felt like kind of a jackass, and I think probably not rightfully so- he did grab my nipple after all, but the party was winding down at this point in the night, and literally everyone who was present at the party saw this kid hunched over himself in pain and gave me a scolding look, like, “What did you do to this poor kid, you 26 year-old creep?” I had to apologize profusely. I feel bad that it happened the way that it did, but I’m not sure that I’m actually sorry I kicked him in the johnson. He really milked the situation too, staying on the ground for way longer than he really needed to, I mean, come on, I didn’t kick him that hard, and afterwards he told people that his piss was a little red, which I’m not sure I believe. The kid eventually got up and was walking around again, he told me we were cool, so that’s fine, I mean, I didn’t care one way or another, but I’m glad he got over that whole episode.

And where was Buffy during all of this? Oh yeah, shortly after she smashed me upside the head, she passed the fuck out on the floor, again, except this time she had no bed to speak of because she had already moved all of her stuff to her new apartment. So I just left her there this time, sorry Buffy..... you snooze you lose, I guess...? Me, Rianna, and Henry got pretty bored of college kids who were all slowly starting to either pass out or become incomprehensibly drunk, so I convinced Rianna that she was sober enough to drive me home, and that rather than spoon on the floor of Buffy’s room, we could spoon in my queen sized bed. Rianna, excited at the prospect of both sleeping somewhere other than the floor and spooning with me, agreed after some coaxing that she was indeed sober enough to drive.   We left Buffy passed the fuck out in her living room, and who knows what became of Sammy, but whatever, I had been punched, slapped, and scolded, not to mention I was plenty drunk at that point, it was a worthwhile night without any additional shenanigans needed, in fact, it was at the point where any such added shenanigans might be a mistake, so I felt no obligation to stay any longer.   We gave Henry a ride to his car down the road and called it a night at like 3am. Not too bad for a bunch of rookies.

Monday, 24 August 2009

Inglourious Basterds (IMDB.com spelling): World at War, Bradd Pitt Kills Nazis, Ends Up Alright.

Bradd Pitt makes mostly good career choices, and this is not one of the exceptions. You've got a group of vengeful Jewish-American soldiers parachuting into German-occupied France in order to terrorize and demoralize the Nazi ground troops, can't be too bad of a flick, right? If it were a video game, the concept would be a slam dunk, I can promise you that, because every adolescent male loves killing stuff with overwhelming brutality, and everyone hates Nazis, but really, how does it all play out on film? Not too bad, actually.

Don't get the wrong idea from the trailers, this would be a mistake. The trailers show guys running with machine guns, a dude getting his shit ruined courtesy of a Louisville Slugger, and Bradd Pitt getting tackled. I'm not saying this is a dull movie by any means, but the trailers might have you believe you are indeed going to be watching the film adaptation of the yet to be made video game: non-stop shooting, over-the-top violence, and a plot scribbled somewhere in the margins. This would not be the Tarantino we are familiar with, and this is not Inglourious Basterds. Think more along the lines of Kill Bill vol. 2. I.B. is similarly divided into various chapters, and roughly parralleling Kill Bill 2, some chapters are heavy on the dialogue, others heavy on the violence, which at times ends up being pretty grotesque. There are more than a few of those tension building sequences that you're familiar with if you've seen any of Tarantino's past works (i.e. Resevoir Dogs, Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction), and some might have even gone on a little too long for a movie that was supposed to be about killing Nazis, but then again, you gotta remember, this isn't the video game, this is a Quentin Tarantino film, perhaps arguably one of his best.

The trailers might also lead you to believe that the plot is overwhelmingly simple. You see Bradd Pitt in those commercials emphasizing how his group of soldiers does "one thing only: Killing Nazis," and one could be forgiven for thinking that the movie centers around just that. And it does... kinda... but listen, Inglourious Basterds wasn't about wholesale slaughter of Nazis any more than Kill Bill was about Uma Thurman killing David Carradine. Sure, a bunch of Nazis die, but that's kind of the destination, whereas the film is more about the journey.

The main problem is, as with any World War 2 movie involving a planned assassination of Hitler, or some brilliant scheme to end the war early, you already know it can't succeed, because well... history, right, I mean, it's common knowledge that Hitler and Joseph Goebbels committed suicide, and Hermann Goering famously stood trial at Nuremberg. So even though through the movie it looks like everything is going to come together in the end, you know something has to prevent the plan(s) from working. Unless you are a dumbass.

Tuesday, 02 June 2009

I woke up this morning and...... III

Part 3: Into the Night

The voicemail was my buddy Anna. I know Anna from ultimate, she plays on the same team with me and North. Anna and I both recently ended our individual long-ish term relationships, so I think that explains why she’s wanted to hang out with me so much recently, I don’t mean as a rebound type thing, I just mean we’re buddies and we’ve been having tough times, so you know, misery loves company or whatever.

Anna loves to drunk dial and drunk text... you know what I mean, you get really drunk and randomly call one of your friends who wasn't necessarily expecting to hear from you, and you just let'em know, you're drunk as fuck, and fuck them for not hanging out with you more often, and/or whatever else drunkenly comes out of your mouth. Notably, Ivan has in the past accidentally drunk dialed my mother's house at 3 a.m. thinking it was me. On two separate occasions. In fact, I had drunk dialed Anna the night before (after the rock and/or roll show with North), calling her a 'stupid bitch' for not getting her ass in gear and coming out to the show with me, North, and 'this girl who keeps calling me a faggot' (I know this only because Anna saved the message on her phone and let me listen to it later). So I half expected the voicemail to be her returning the favor by slurring curse words and talking about how she can smoke me in Wii sports (which she cannot, by the way), but this was not a drunk dial. It turns out that she had called me much earlier on in the evening, and I just hadn't noticed because I was too busy feeling catastrophically ill. She said two sentences:

"@-ron, I’m having a party tonight. Come over."

Well shit. Still sitting on the toilet (yes, I checked my voicemail on the toilet.... don't feel too grossed out, as a rule, I don't call people or answer the phone from the toilet), all I really wanted to do was drink several glasses of water and go the fuck to sleep. I mean seriously, I had spent the last hour or so crammed in the back seat of Amy's car car trying, with very limited success, to navigate Ivan back to Cambridge, while having to shit so badly that I considered sitting on my thumb to prevent the tide from coming in early. And then when I finally got home and expunged the bad clams from the internal transfer station, and we're talking weapons-grade materials coming out the back end here, I have to say, I was quite sweaty and feeling rather dehydrated (read a few entries back, in January, if you really need a fuller description of the @-ron diarrhea experience).

This is to say nothing of the fact that I hadn’t slept well Friday night on account of drinking a shitload of beer at the terrible show, and I had been drinking beers all day with Ivan on the beach. And I’m starting my Barbri bar review course on Monday - what I actually needed was to just relax, flush the bad clams and several gallons of beer completely out of my system, get a good night’s sleep, and have a quiet Sunday of doing laundry and beating up my two little sisters. But.... I’m me, so of course I said to myself, “Fuck it, I’m in, why the fuck not?”

So I biked there. It would have been $3.40 round trip on the T, and would have been an hour each way, and that's assuming I either left the party early enough to catch the last train, or spent the night and grabbed a train in the morning- if I left the party that night after the last trains ran, I'd have to get a cab and I'd have no one to share the cost with; probably a 10-15 minute cab ride at a cost of closer to $20 each way; or a 20 minute free bike ride from Cambridge to Allston. Still slightly drunk and in the darkness. Well, I was poor, under the influence, and I don't value my life any more than I value the lives of most other people, so I threw my wallet, keys, phone, and a sweatshirt into my backpack, clipped a pocket knife to my belt (listen, I was riding late at night through some shady and dimly lit areas, gotta have a backup plan in case any wannabe thugs decide to get cute; funny how I remembered this for safety but not my bike helmet) and departed.

Lock and chain bike to road sign outside Anna's place. Enter party slightly sweaty from the ride there. Anna was the only one I really knew at the party, so it was a little awkward entering the party and encountering a crowd of unfamiliar faces, but, on the other hand, I was still feeling a little intoxicated from the combination of drinking all day, dehydration due to diarrhea, and having biked for 20 minutes on the way there, so it really wasn't all that awkward, it just should have been.

It has occurred to me that this party cannot possibly seem all that awesome compared to Bob Drago in the last entry, so I'll just give you a quick rundown of some of the more memorable moments:

It was a belated Cinco De Mayo party, so... in addition to a keg, there were huge coolers of margaritas... not that I needed to drink any more, but hell, I didn't bike all the way out there to sober up and then feel hungover throughout the rest of the night. At various times during the night I was double fisting, one margarita and one beer... you know, out of respect for Cinco De Mayo and my Mexican heritage.

Anna and I were playing Beruit (as opposed to beer pong) together as partners and I have to say, she was totally nasty... at first... and I sucked... at first; later in the night we would reverse roles, but for a while I was having a serious dry spell, and at some point I blurted out, "My god, watching myself shoot is like watching 5 retarded kids trying to stick their dicks in a keyhole!" That line basically stopped the game for a moment of silent "WTF" looks, only to be broken by my saying, "It's a fucking ping pong ball not a set of tits, quit holding it and shoot!"

And at a later time during Beruit, I had the brilliant idea of trying to make Anna feel better by taking a few shots at her as-of-recently-ex boyfriend, which it turns out was a huge mistake that pretty much cost us the game. And by that I mean, it cost me my partner, who stormed off for some time and then came back and wasn't really the same shooter as she was before I was an idiot.

Eventually I gave a brief history lesson to explain my name, that went a little something like this: "Dude, Aaron Burr was not a fucking political assassin, he killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel!! Dueling is a crime now, but wasn't at the time -- he was acquitted at his murder trial! And did you know, Alexander Hamilton was never even president!!!" Basically I was the fucking coolest kid at the party, and Anna was super glad she invited me.

And then to top off the history lesson, I got into some deep discussions about the virtues (or lack thereof) of stainless steel refrigerators, European designed dishwashers, and non-self standing stoves. Pretty soon thereafter a crowd gathered to watch some jacked, heavily tattoooed girl with a really short haircut demonstrate how to properly do pull-ups using the pull-up bar in the doorway; I was astounded, and responded by nudging the guy next to me and saying, "Wow, shit, that is way more manly than my discussion of kitchen appliances." This got a dirty look from the girl doing the pull-ups, and Anna glared at me and said something like, "Dude, that girl looks like she wants to kick your ass, and she probably could." I drunkenly replied the following: "Whatever, if that dyke tries to fight me, I'll cut off her fucking dick (pointing to the pocket knife that was still clipped to my belt)." I can't remember if Anna was madder about that comment or me bringing up her ex boyfriend.... but she was pretty unhappy with me at that time. I am an awesome party guest.

So at some point the party died off.... I don't know why, and disappointingly, there was still quite a bit of the keg left. I decided that I was too drunk to bike home. Really I probably wasn't but it was like 2am and I was exhausted and just didn't feel like biking the 20 minutes back to Cambridge. The problem was that there were two couches and three people needing a place to crash. I resolved the issue by convincing one of the would-be-couch-crashers that he was plenty sober enough to drive home, whether or not he actually was... well.... I'm sure he was fine. Or whatever.

I pretty much jumped out of bed the next morning. I would later explain to Anna what had happened as follows [feel free to insert hung over/drunk groans and grunts as needed]:

“Fuck, hey Anna, shit, I had to jump out of bed this morning suddenly, because I just randomly got a feeling like I knew I was going to puke. You know what I mean? So I ran to the bathroom and puked, and then I had to piss, but I ended up pissing all over myself cuz I’m still drunk as fuck. Fuck. Don’t tell anyone though.”

It turned out that her roommate and the roommate’s sister were in the kitchen about 5 feet away from Anna, just out of my line of sight, so they naturally heard me just as clearly as Anna had heard me, and they then emerged into my visible range smiling, but also giving me a look like, “Are you for real?” The answer is yes, this time, I am for real.

Monday, 01 June 2009

I woke up this morning and..... II

Part 2: Saturday

We arrived at the Cape at ten minutes to 2. That's right, we left my house at 10 and it took us almost four hours to get to the Cape. Wait, that's not right. Let's try this again. Ok, so we arrived at Ivan's beach house at ten minutes to 2pm on Saturday. We were supposed to leave my house at "around 10," in order to be to the cape around 11 or 11:30 ish and be on the beach at noon. But, what actually happened was, Ivan was 2 fucking hours + late picking me up, so we left my house at about 12:30 and got to the beach house at around 1:50 or so, and we didn't end up on the beach until after 2. Good stuff. I was pretty fucking hung over, so it was good that I had some extra time to shower, take one of those nasty gut wrenching hang-over shits, and get some food in me. Too bad I was too hung over to sleep during those extra couple of hours, but it worked out alright anyhow.

[Ivan, you may want to skip the next section buddy, but it's all out of love.... all out of love]

Ivan, also, is a pretty bad driver. That was generous... he's actually pretty much garbage behind the wheel. He said the reason he was late picking me up was that he got stuck in a conversation with his roommate and had to stay and talk to him about all kinds of roommate stuff, but you know what, honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if he got lost between his house in Brighton and my house in Cambridge (total distance, approx. 4 miles) and drove around for two fucking hours without bothering to call me for directions. Fuck.

[keep scrolling down Ivan, skip this part too] Ivan's girlfriend Amy came with us as well, she's a cool chick, and since Ivan can't keep his shit together and maintain his car properly, we ended up taking her car. She has a really nice car, an Acura TL, I think, nice leather interior and a GPS navigation system. Remember that, GPS Navigation system. So it was a really sweet ride, I somehow got crammed in the back with all kinds of girl shit (shoes, brushes, miscellaneous articles of clothing, you name it, it was back there) along with our duffel bags that we had brought for the day. Also, Ivan being 6'4" and his girlfriend also being rather tall for a girl and desiring leg room left me with approximately zero leg room, even in spite of the car being a good size. That plus I was hung over as hell, and Ivan, even with the navigation system, took no less than 3 wrong turns (3 on the way there, plus another 2 on the way back), so I gotta tell you, it was a great ride. Amy got pissed because Ivan was driving like a retarded deaf amputee, and every bump and sharp (often nearly missed) turn made me consider rolling down the windows and discharging my hangover all over the side of Amy's really nice black car.

[You're good to start reading again Ivan] We get there, finally. Ivan's family loves me. I go to the Cape all the time with Ivan so they've come to know me, and compared to the Ivan's brothers and Ivan, I'm sure I seem like some form of relief from the normal beach house residents, i.e. I moderate my consumption of beer, I don't require 60 lbs of food to be ready to eat at all times, and I mostly stay quiet and try to be polite. Ivan and his 3 brothers, well... they're a good time, but boys will be boys, and they do get rambunctious from time to time. Nothing against them, I love them to death, but that's just the way it is when you get the four Drago boys together plus me, often a few friends of the other brothers, and one or maybe two females at most (Ivan's mother is extremely strict about no wild parties at the beach house and no random slutty girls allowed in the house-- I think rightfully so, I mean, she has four boys and a legitimately nice beach house, she can't be having the place getting trashed and her sons getting everyone in the neighborhood pregnant. Makes for something of a sausage fest, but believe you me, with a shitload of beer and the entire beach at our disposal, Ivan and I have never had problems finding what we need to find out there). Not to mention Ivan's father, Bob Drago, who, by god, is a wonderful human being, but he is a beast of a man.

A word on Bob Drago, if I may. I love this guy, I really do, but he's quite a character. I mean no disrespect to the man, nor Ivan, but I have to say a little something about big Bob Drago. First of all, he is large. Ivan stands at a towering 6'4" and weighs in at a mammoth 230 lbs give or take. Not a small person, by any means. To give you some perspective on how large Ivan's father is, I give you this example: Last 4th of July, myself, Ivan, and another friend went down to the beach house, and the other friend, Tweedle Dipshit, proceeded to get incredibly wasted and was really rather impolite and insulting to some of Ivan's family members. Bob Drago's response was to scream at Ivan to get Tweedle Dipshit under control, grabbing Ivan by the shoulders with his two massive bear-claw hands, and shaking him around as though he were a weightless rag doll. Ivan is 5 inches taller than I am and weighs 40% more than I do, and his dad threw him around like nothing. You might be thinking that this only demonstrates how strong Bob Drago is, but seriously, think about that: How the fuck would a man be throwing Ivan around if he was, say, my height and weight? Even if he was completely ripped, it just couldn't happen. So you get the point, the guy's massive. He's got a body like a grizzly bear, and a voice that matches it, never quite speaking, but rather always either growling or bellowing.

Also, Bob Drago has a seriously awesome personality. I have to say it's not for everyone, but it most certainly is for me. I again illustrate by example: As we walked into the beach house, 2 hours later than we were expected to arrive on Saturday, Ivan was eating a protein bar. Ivan's dad was coming up from the beach as we were entering the house, and without saying "Hi" or anything in the way of introduction, immediately said the following: "Jeeeezis Christ Ivan, what the fack ah you eatin', dog shit? Holy hell man, I flushed bettah shit than that down the can this morning. [then looking at me, and I'm not doing a damned thing except minding my own business] And @-ron, shit, aren't you two a pair that a full house couldn't beat?"

I know Bob Drago, and this is a typical opening line from him, so I smile and take it all in. Ivan's Dalmation was there too, and the thing is old as hell, like 13 or so years, which means he's ancient in dog years. So Ivan is greeting his dad and throwing away the protein bar wrapper when he steps in wet-ness.

Ivan: "Dad, what the fuck did you track in here from the beach?"

Bob Drago: "What the fuck, I didn't track shit. [he had been leading the dog away by the collar before Ivan had stepped in the wet-ness, but I only realized what he was doing after Ivan stepped in it, and by the way, we had kicked off our sandals at the front door, so we were barefoot at the time]. Hey dumbass, can you clean up the dog piss, or is that like way too much for you to think about?"

Ivan: "Fuck!! That was dog piss?!" [Yes, the elderly Dalmation had pissed on the floor in the exitement of seeing Ivan and myself arrive]

Me: "Alright alright, where are the paper towels... and do you have any Windex or another cleaner?"

Bob Drago, from outside where he was bringing the dog, "Use bleach you dumbasses! Where the fuck did you learn how to clean up piss?"

Ivan: "Dad, we don't have dogs! How were we supposed to know to use bleach?"

Bob Drago, now re-entering the house: "Well then what the fuck do you use to clean up when you piss the floor and shit yourselves?"

Seriously, I love Bob Drago.

So it was fine, we eventually got out on the beach and threw the frisbee around, played some washer tosser, and consumed more than enough beer given that I was still reeling from the previous night's madness. I always get shit on when I eat lunch with the Drago family, and I don't mean really shit on, again, they love me, I love them, but I get a hard time just because I am not a leviathan. I mean all of them, all four brothers and Bob Drago are enormous, and Ivan's mom, who is by no means a fat woman, is certainly of large proportions. So a guy like me, when I'm eating lunch, I need about 1 hamburger, 1 hotdog, a handful of potato chips and a pickle and I'm all set, it's even more than enough. To the Drago family, that's malnurishment. I'm pretty sure Ivan eats 3 hotdogs and 2 burgers (or maybe the other way around) and everyone else eats about twice as much as I do. Look, Ivan weighs about 70 lbs more than I do, what the hell would I need 2 burgers and 3 dogs for? But I take shit from the Drago family for being tiny and eating like their adolescent nieces and nephews, it's all in good fun.

Eventually, it comes time for us to hit the road- we had planned on leaving on Saturday evening so that Ivan and his girlfriend could hit up a barbeque in Cambridge that night, so we left when the sun started to fade on the beach. On our way out we went to a local seafood restaraunt with Ivan's parents, which was good... again, I got shit for not eating much, but I had a whole huge plate of fried clams and french fries, and you know what, I just don't feel the need to eat that much food, it's not that it was bad, I'm just a normal, not huge, sized guy.

Ivan's dad joked around about how you'd know if the clams weren't cooked right or if they had red tide, because you'd feel it out your back end within the hour. And I guess based on those words of advice, I had some bad clams. Yeah... the whole car ride home I was terribly ill. Hilariously, I started to pass some gas in the car and that made me feel a lot better, except it was only temporary relief- the stomach pains would dispel along with the toxic exhaust, but then they would build up again inside me, until I had to let another one loose. So I kept letting them go as needed, and the pain would surge and then ease, and then surge again. And this was unpleasant smelling, to say the least.   Ivan was choking on the fumes and his eyes were tearing up, and let me tell you something, Ivan himself is real big on the protein shakes, and protein shake farts smell worse than a rotten corpse that's been sitting in dog shit for a week, so grossing Ivan out with a back side discharge of some internal smog is impressive.

Ivan taking a handful of wrong turns as we got nearer to Boston did nothing to help the situation, as with each passing minute I felt closer to shitting myself. The entire time I felt awful, and each time I let off another cloud of burning hot toxic exhaust, I checked my shorts as best I could to make sure they weren't wet, and silently convinced myself that I hadn't just opened the dump valve prematurely, although to be honest, I wasn't totally convinced until I was out of the car and in my bathroom [I made sure that my duffel bag obscured Ivan and Amy's view of my behind as I exited the car, just as a precaution].

So.. there I was....it was about 9 or so when I finally got back to my house, I had to skip the planned evening barbeque because I was feeling so ill, and I made it home to the bathroom without a moment to spare. And then, as I was sitting on the can, still partially drunk from the several beers I had drank throughout the day, bad clams finally exiting in a stop-and-go stream of diarhea, I took my phone out of my pocket and saw it flashing, indicating I had a voicemail.