Thankfully we all turned out normal-ish

On Monday, I took Marathon Man to the “Mortified” show. I scored tickets a couple of months in advance, and have been looking forward to it ever since. Basically it is normal people reading their actual diaries, love letters, poems, school papers, etc. It totally makes me want to find my own diary where I probably wrote about my childhood crushes and how my Barbies were all sluts (seriously, they didn’t wear underwear!).

One very funny sweet looking woman read her teenage diary, and she commented that at the time she thought the world was against her. Well it turns out, she was the brattiest bitch mean girl ever! Oh and hilarious! She read things like “I don’t know why Emily is so mad at me, I mean I only KISSED her boyfriend [Frank] and it is not like I slept with him, next week…so my parents had to have a talk with me because they caught me having sex with Frank…Emily is such a bitch so I tee-peed her house with toilet paper, eggs, bleach, milk, newspapers, and downy laundry detergent….so Frank took me and Sam to the mall to get Devo tickets and while he ran into the mall he totally left the keys in the car so we totally had to steal it and we like almost hit three cars and died!...so Sam and I went on a weekend leadership outing this weekend and we had to stay in a room with Megan and she is like totally religious and Catholic so we decided to torture her and started chanting Satanic sounding things”.

A gay guy who was voted most religious student three years in a row by his Catholic school read out loud his poems about the curse of being gay (because it was against religious law). I am impressed at his courage because they were all a bit uncomfortable but super humorous. For example, he would write “I am on my knees and should be asking for salvation while I swallow your hot poison juice”. I guess you had to be there because M-Man and I almost fell out of our seats.

Another girl read from her travel journal. She confessed that as a teenager, she desperately wanted to be British. She sometimes even talked in what she thought was a British accent (it wasn’t). Anyway, her 16 year old dreams came true when the marching band (yes she was in the band) went to England to tour for a couple of weeks. One day the were scheduled to play in an outdoor plaza, but it was so cold and the winds were so fierce that they were moved to the only indoor venue in the town large enough to accompany them…a strip club! She wrote “yeah it was really strange because we had all sorts of flashing lights and even a disco ball and the people there were all drunk or drinking”. Finally after playing in several small towns (where the reeked of manure and had weird food) they arrived in London. She wrote “oh my God, it was so cool, it was like the coolest city ever, I mean they have a store called Tower Records and it should have been called like every album ever made store (fyi she was from Detriot), and later we were able to see a play called Cats and I totally made eye contact with one of them”.

One of the crowd favorites was this guy who read his “raps”. Yeah he was a white kid from the Connecticut suburbs, and he and his friend formed a rap group. His name was Ice-slick, his other white friend’s name was Ice-mack, and the lone black guy in their trio was called Nick (his real name). All of his raps were about drugs and gang violence even though it was just stuff he saw on TV. One of the lyrics was “yo I survived the streets comm’in at you hard from the Bronx” and he sadly interjected, “no I was not from the Bronx, I have never been there, I from Connecticut, I swam at a country club”.

A woman who is a nanny now read us her school project titled “My Future”. I think she was 10-ish, so the goals were lofty and comical. She said she would be a dancer and then a fashion designer, and then her fashion business would fail (yeah pretty pessimistic tween) when she was 21 so she would then get married and have a child named Abby, while she raised Abby she would coach her soccer team (ack soccer mom!) and watch all her plays (sounds like someone did not get enough attention from the parents when she was young) and design all of her clothes, then she'll become a fashion designer again and only design children’s clothes, then that business would fail and so she would have another child named Alan (she wanted them all to have the same first letter name etc), and she would become Mayor of her town at age 25 (because all of what I described could realistically happen in four years!), and eventually when she was 30 she would be elected President of the United States (ummm, isn’t there an higher age limit dumbass). Of course the presentation was accompanied by awesomely bad pictures that she had drawn herself.

Okay there were a lot more speakers, but I don’t want to write a ten page blog post. Here is their website and I highly recommend going to see the show when it stops in your town (they are a touring group). http://www.getmortified.com/

Return of the Farrell

I have noticed a few changes in myself since moving to NYC. For starters, I swear a lot more, I mean a whole fucking lot. I have also become pretty distrustful. I mean just today a guy in a suit stopped me on my way to work to ask where the nearest liquor store is. Umm, it was 7:30 in the morning…are they even open…seriously! I pointed to the wino curled up in the fetal position nearby and said “I don’t know, ask him” because chances are, he does. Finally, my alcohol tolerance has increased tenfold. Yeah technically I am now a binge drinker because I consume more than 5 drinks in one evening….but how else am I going to get the great stories to write up in the blog!!!! Anyway, I can single handily thank one person for my increase in alcohol consumption, Farrell!

Yes the Legendary Farrell, one of my first friends in the city. He moved back to KC this summer, and now he was back in town for a whirlwind long weekend. Thursday night started with the requisite cheap drinks and withered hot dogs at Rudy’s. Not being able to keep up with Farrell, I tapped out and was replaced by Marshall and Ali. I guess they gave a good showing in my absence since Farrell came back to the apartment at 2am, passed out in his clothes, and snored like a champ. Seriously, Bree and I talked the next day about the loudness about the snoring, and she said she was ready to maul him with a pillow.

Friday night we kept with the tradition and drank again, but in the Village instead. We met up with Jeff and little Joshua. Okay, Jeff is openly nicknamed sckeezy Jeff because he is the walking embodiment of Quagmire from Family Guy. Giggidy, giggidy! He is the same guy who made out with two random drunk chicks at Doc’s, twice (even after seeing another guy step in on the same action moments before). He was wearing a molten Star of David necklace and a dog tag with a design that looked like half a Menorah on it. Yeah, not kidding! The amazing thing is the guy is magic with the ladies. I seriously have never seen him strike out (well except for my friends and I, then again we are not Jewish and cannot hear the sub human hypnotic suggestions). That night he brought his date who was a gorgeous, smart, funny woman. What the hell! We all gave each other confused shrugs behind his back.

Saturday was an event filled day. I say that only because we planned on drinking at two places. First off was the Brooklyn Brewery. Yes, yes, I WAS there last weekend, but seriously this place is hopping on a Saturday. Plus it was a way to justify drinking at 1 in the afternoon. We made friends with a Swede named Matt when we took over his table (they are a the hot commodities…tables, not the Swedish). Anyway, he also was in town for the weekend and the brewery was the highlight of his America trip. The Statue of Freaking Liberty, Empire State Building, and Central Park hold no comparison to fresh draft beer. Plus I guess Brooklyn Brews are all the rage in Sweden where you can only get it bottled, so being at the brewery and drinking it out of A GLASS was a real treat!

I brought along cards this time to pass the time as we consume our mandatory 6 pints of beer. During “circle of death”, Bree was able to make the rule that we had to say “over” once we were done speaking. Yeah, genius I know. Well I pulled the next rule card and Farrell made some comment about not allowing women to talk, etc, so I decided the new rule would require us to say “over (pause) Farrell sucks” after speaking. Ah ha ha ha. He wasn’t too happy about that one but it made for some laughs.

As expected, the place was bustling. Since we had been there for three hours, the bartenders started to give us free beers. Not a good idea since we were already wasted. Seriously, we started playing Indian poker with very curious more sober people looking on. Eventually the shut down shop and we needed to head back to Manhattan anyway for the KSU basketball game watch party. Farrell, Bree, and I grabbed the Swede and hopped into a gypsy cab that was willing to drive us to the Upper East Side for only $20. Umm, buddy, you better check your math since it would be about double that just to get to Grand Central. Bree and I had our fill of booze, so we ended up leaving in the first half. Hopefully we won. Note for next time, build up tolerance so that I can last at least 5 hours with the champ….Farrell.

On a side note, the next day we went to the Natural History Museum. The only notable thing is that I crop dusted a small child. For those who don’t know what that means, good. For those who do, it was awesome!

My Boys

Just because I cannot deny what a freaking stalker I am. I'm missing them like candy.

At least the doll won't comment on your wiener

Super bowl Sunday started in a porn shop. It was John’s birthday, so all the teachers decided to buy a blow up sex doll for him. Marathon Man and I were tasked with finding the doll since I do live in the porn district. Seriously, walking up 8th Avenue it is like: adult video store, peep show, sex shop, pizza place, strip club, Subway sandwiches, adult video…

I have always been curious to venture inside the adult video/sex toy shops because they have such compelling advertisements. Live Nude European, Largest Selection in New York, 100 Videos $3.99 or less, GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS! Plus I see all sorts of shady guys looking extremely guilty leaving these places and I begin to wonder what the hell do they do in there? I mean these guys come out looking like they just smacked Shirley Temple in the butt or something.

Anyway, I was presently surprised to see how organized the inside was. Okay you want anal chubby chaser Asians…aisle 6. Dildos to the right, anal beads in the back… Another surprise was the price of sex dolls! I was figuring $20-$50, but these models were priced no less than $275! It better feel damn real because I could get the actual thing over at Port Authority for half that price. M-Man and I were disappointed after price comparing at several shops that their little “gag” gift would deplete their meager pension plan. While in one store, we could not immediately find the dolls. M-Man suggested we go to the second level since there was a sign marked “girls upstairs”. Yeah, we were idiots because it was live girls! It was interesting to catch them off guard flipping through magazines and looking completely bored.

Eventually we headed over to Ricky’s (which is like a Spencer’s gifts) and bought a fake Pamela Anderson Baywatch doll complete with the anal hole. The best part was that all the holes are pink on the inside as if it would make you forget it is just a plastic doll! You wonder how I know…well M-Man and I could not resist blowing it up because neither of us had seen one in person…I swear. We then stuck an enlarged picture of another hot teacher on the face and gave it to John during the super bowl.

The teacher gang was all over at John’s apartment in Queens for the super bowl. I guess I suspected something more dramatic when we exited the subway platform like being asked if we wanted to buy drugs or a gun. Anyway, being that a New York City team (whose stadium is actually in Jersey) was playing, people were getting really worked up during the game. Towards the end of the game, the room erupted when Eli broke like six tackles in a scramble and the receiver caught the most ridiculous pass while doing a backbend. Dan started jumping around the apartment and was so enthusiastic that the vibration caused a weird African wooden trophy to fall off a shelf and smash through John’s glass top end table. Yeah, imagine being there…yeah yeah yeah SMASH…dude! We were all caught speechless waiting for John to react, you know like when a child falls and you wait to see if they are seriously hurt before laughing in their face. The best part was how calm and cool John behaved. He was like “oh, well that table was always in the way anyway, oh and that African thing, it was a gift from my Grandmother, yeah she is dead now…but I can totally superglue it”.

Something brewing

Since Marathon Man’s dream job would be a brew chemist, we made a date out of touring the Brooklyn Brewery in Williamsburg. Now Williamsburg is a neighborhood in Brooklyn, but it may as well be I don’t know...Bulgaria. Seriously, the place is inhabited by Hipsters who patrol the area in skinny black jeans, vests, and suspenders.

Not wanting to drink fruitful amounts of beer on an empty stomach, we stopped in a Mom & Pop diner on Bedford Ave. I think it was called Breakfast stop or Kitchen stop, but I am not sad about not remembering the name because the food SUCKED! We both ordered a grilled cheese sandwich only to have it arrive as a slice of American cheese melted between two hamburger buns. Ummmm, it basically was a cheeseburger minus the meat right. We looked at each other warily as if to say “no….you try it first”. We should have trusted our first impression because later that evening we both had upset stomachs.

We arrived at the brewery in time for the free tour which consisted of one room and a twenty minute long explanation. I zoned out a bit during the lecture, so my memory tells me the key points were: 1) the guy who designed the I heart NY logo also designed the Brooklyn Brewery logo, 2) they have a random hops paddle that has absolutely no purpose other than act as a prop for the speaker, and 3) the giant vat of pee is really iodine…and urine. The only thing lively about the tour was the barn/brewery cat who walked around thinking (with a French accent) “uck, what are you people doing here, can’t you see this is MY place”.

Although the tour was free, the beer was not. Most other breweries let you binge for an hour or so before kicking you out, but this place needed the extra $4 a beer to remain the #34 beer distributor in America. The beer was pretty fresh though (or as MM put it, “straight from the teat”). The brewery was also the place to be in Brooklyn on a Saturday afternoon because the line was practically out the door. On our way back to Manhattan, we stopped into the retro resale clothing store Beacon’s Closet if only to take this random ski mask picture.

Rob-a-po-looza

Well Rob was leaving us again for Romania. This time we told him he must come back with an eastern European wife. Anyway, we hit the town to celebrate his last NYC weekend in a while. We started off with a fondue dinner at Bourgeois Pig. Okay I don’t know how you can classify fondue as a meal! It is just cheese! Dan (my friend visiting from Chicago) met up with us and we headed over to the speakeasy Please Don’t Tell. Okay this place is so mock exclusive that you have to make reservations the day of (no advance) and the phone lines don’t open until 3pm. So I call at 3:10 and make a reservation for 9pm. Well I show up and they are like, “oh yeah you are first on the waiting list”. What? Here is the conversation between me and the hostess:
Me: what, no I made a reservation
Her: well it fills up quickly and now you are on the waiting list
Me: no, I called at 3:10, you did not book up in ten minutes
Her: well we will give you the first table that frees up, it should be like 15 minutes
(20 minutes later)
Her: I can get you in at 10pm or you can sit at the bar
Me: (in my head) jackass

At least we were able to play 25 cent Mrs. PacMan and a retarded Space Invader while we waited. Dan actually got the new machine high score, so now he is a rock star. So Dana, Rob, Dan, and I are eventually crammed into seats at the bar instead of relaxing at a table which I had reserved! The one good thing about being at the bar was talking with the very knowledgeable bartenders. You basically tell them what kinds of alcohol you like, and they pull out a great cocktail from their ass. Seriously, I said I preferred light rum and a more citrus taste and he made me a…..snow cone! Well it had a fancy long name like “Queen Anne’s whisked delight blah blah blah” but I prefer to refer to it as “snow cone”. It had smashed mint at the bottom with several types of light rums and other liquors in the middle (made it taste like lemonade) capped off with a scope of shaved ice with a drizzle of red liquor on top. I couldn’t help but munch on the top of the drink. I think the bartender was annoyed that I called it snow cone instead of its proper name because soon the women around me started asking the bartender for “I want a yummy snow cone too”.

Eventually we met up with Evan, Vaswar, Chris, Melissa, Betty, and Dom at a dive bar on 6th and Ave A (I don’t recall the name….too many snow cones). We decided to send Rob off in style and ordered Irish car bombs and redbull/vodkas which is basically the crack of choice for our generation.

We finished off the night with Happy Endings. Yeah, I am not kidding. The place is really called “Happy Endings” and the sign is even in Chinese. I have been there once before with Wall Street guy, and it can best be described as a spa/massage parlor during the day and a club at night. We gathered in our own personal VIP booth where we were able to judge people for their horrible dancing. Eventually the DJ put on some of Dana’s music requests, and we soon became “those people”. Tisk tisk tisk.

The games we play

Wednesday was the pairing of sports and beer. My college (K-State) was playing its in-state rival (KU) in basketball. Being faithful (and not realistic) to the Alma Mata, we all hope for a win. Granted that seemed like a very unlikely accomplishment since KSU is a 50% team that starts three freshmen, and we have not won against KU at home in 25 years, and KU was undefeated and ranked number 2 in the nation, oh and did I mention it is K-freaking-U the basketball dynasty of the Midwest!

Well surprisingly, the game was kept close the entire time. The whole group was getting revved up and oh, and drunk. My friend was texting her boss about work stuff while trying to concentrate on the game. She was also sending messages to her boyfriend (who was also an avid KSU fan) about the score, lead changes, players getting in foul trouble, etc. When it was in the final minutes and K-State had a marginal lead, my friend texted “if KSU wins tonight, I’m going to have sex with you”. A minute later she got this message back “I don’t think it is going to happen either way” from her boss! Yeah, she sent it to the wrong person! Ah ha ha ha! How awesomely awkward! Good thing she and her female boss are cool like that.

Afterwards, the gang continued the celebration at Brother Jimmy’s BBQ where they serve fishbowls. Okay some of us have fond memories of fishbowls from Rowdy Trouty’s in Aggieville. Their delicious taste makes you forget you are drinking a swill of various liquors mixed with the saliva of six other people being held in a vase. We were further entertained by the plastic gator they served with it because hey when doesn’t a gator belong in a fishbowl?

Slimer rules!

Who you gonna call…..GHOST BUSTERS!!!! Found the station house tucked away in Tribecca after introducing MM to the group over Greek food.