...when you neglect to pick both a kicker and a defense in your fantasy football league draft. Damn. Luckily I'm first on waivers...

Two weekends ago, I hung out with Garth, his very cool girlfriend "G", and Lumpy. Friday night was drinking and watching the G&G Makeout Factory. Every time Lumpy and I turned around to ask them if they wanted a beer or what to request on the jukebox, Garth and girlfriend had their tongues down each other's throat. Yeah, I liked watching.

Saturday, Lumpy and I rolled out of our hotel room around noon and searched every DC area bar for the ever elusive Boxer game. You know. The one that I dominated a few months ago in Chicago. We couldn't find one. So instead, we just drank.

The last bar we went to was a pool hall, with some tasty Hefeweizein. Lumpy and I began playing 8-ball at $2 per game. I lost six out of the first seven games. But after a few beverages, the stakes increased like a Party Poker SNG, and I was up $400.

Next thing we knew, we were passed out on our hotel room beds, each of us sandwiched between two of DC's finest pieces of ass.

This was at 8pm. We were unable to meet up with Garth and his gal.

We woke up and kicked the bitches out at 7am Sunday. That's a hard core night of passing making out.

~

Last Saturday in Cincinnati was more of the same. As I mentioned in my previous post, I participated in field sobriety tests to help out law enformement officials and attorneys.

Here's how it went down.

• Showed up at the Crowne Plaza hotel at 11:30AM.


• Signed a consent form.
  
  


• Noticed that there were at least 2.5 good looking ladies in this volunteer activity. Somehow, at the end of the day, this turned into 4 good looking women, despite there only being 3 females present.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


• They took a breathalyzer test of all of us to get a baseline. One of the gals, a first grade teacher, blew a .039. At noon, when .08 is the legal limit in Ohio.


• I was told that my target was to reach .10 within 3 hours. No problem.
  
  


• Half an hour in, the first "blowing" joke was made to one of the girls. It was not the last.


• One hour in, after five drinks, I was at .026. I was told to kick it up a nacho.
  
  


• "Hey, DP - you're not really showing any signs of impairment."
  
  "Oh yeah,? Bring on the fat chicks!


• After two and a half hours, I checked in at .090. An hour after that, despite not drinking, I was at .096. I'm an underachiever.


• The wives picked my buddy and me up. Seriously. If you drive under the influence you are both an asshole and an idiot.


• I passed out before sunset, unable to meet up with the dwarf for tiny beverages.

Many thanks to Hot Doug for making this happen. Good times.

~

This weekend? I'm taking it easy Saturday night.

Of course, this is probably because my liver will be out of commission after StB visits Thursday night. We're gonna watch my first place Chicago Cubs crush his lowly Brewers. The team in the Central that stays above .500 is gonna win the division. Sad.

This weekend I'm participating in a study where I'll:
1. Show up at an office sober
2. Drink a lot of booze
3. Take field sobriety tests while observed by law enforcement officials and DUI attorneys
4. Hop in a taxi home

August 2007, Vol. 6, Issue 8

1. Pyramid by Paul McGuire
I quickly discovered that Seattle was a bastion for the super weird. You needed to have layered eccentricies in order to stick out among the masses of freaks. Goth-dykes with foot fetishes might freak people out in conservative cities and small towns, but in Seattle, that puts you in the core group of "normal people.".

2. Cross-word by Sigge S. Amdal
Her hair was in explosive disarray across the pillow like the blood spurt pattern from a shotgun blast. It was slightly blond, streaked with brown and very beautiful. It looked like the crossroad of infinite options where only a handful suggested returning to the bed. She was fast asleep.

3. Meeting Mama McGrupp by Change100
I had yet to meet Mama McGrupp. Pauly assured me it was for a good reason. All I knew about this woman was that she was five feet tall, chain-smoked, had a wicked New York accent, was overly fond of Amaretto, and never had anything nice to say about anyone.

4. Kansas Clouds by Susan B. Bentley
Click. I got a photo of Kat just before she gave me the finger. Lying back down, I moved the lens across the sky, trying to capture a cloud on its journey. I sat up and took a picture of the track ahead. Nothing but mud and dust, bordered by fields of corn slowly moving in the breeze, nothing but empty for miles ahead.

5. Summer Story by May B. Yesno
Friends are a difficult thing. As a matter of fact they are almost impossible. Difficult to find for the first thing and just as difficult to keep - especially in a mobile society.

Bad news - my phone doesn't work in Japan.

Eh news - It's tough putting a post together when your screen looks like this:


Good news - I'm only here for three hours.

Better news - There's a noodle bar in the bidness class lounge

Goddamm fantastic news - Self serve sake station! All Nippon Airlines will be on the verge of bankruptcy within two hours...

I'm at the Singapore airport, waiting for my flight to Tokyo. After a four hour wait, I'll hop on a plane back to Chicago. I arrived here late Tuesday night. I spent three full days here, and after all's said and done, two hours flying back and forth. It hurts.

But not as bad as my hangover this morning.

Yesterday was Singapore's National Day - the holiday on which they celebrate their independence from Malaysia. Our firm took us to a dinner overlooking the marina that had a big ceremony, fireworks, and an air show. Plenty of wine was consumed, and we made our way to the Raffles hotel Long Bar - the watering hole in which the Singapore Sling was invented in 1915.

Those fucking girlie drinks are tasty. Gin, brandy, cointreau, Benedictine, grenadine, pineapple juice, lemon juice, and bitters. Oh my. I think I drank thirty. Along with several fine single malts.

I sat like a zombie in our meetings today, sipping water to rehydrate. Sporting a solid cotton mouth, I said, "Goddamm I wish I could have a stick of gum."

An Australian colleague reached into his bag and handed me a stick.

I politely declined. I'd rather make it home safely than get hanged or flogged for chewing on a piece of Juicy Fruit.

~

For the last hour and a half, I've seen wandered around the airport. Every time I walked past a table of eight or more Asians, I immediately thought that I was in a California card room.

I just returned from Los Angeles, where I had meetings with people at the law firm's local branch. It was a very fun trip.

Last night I had the pleasure of attending the Giants-Dodgers game with JoeSpeaker, Heath, and Deacon. I had two goals: Get really drunk and harass one the surliest cheater in MLB history. Watching this guy play really makes me want to puke.

And in the seventh inning I had my chance to achieve the second goal. Fred Lewis finally entered the game, giving the crowd the moment they had been hoping for all night. As a pinch runner for someone who had reached base on an error, he was greeted with taunts of “T-H-G! T-H-G!” and “Lew-is sucks!” and “Just say no!” After the crowd got this out of their system, they all hopped into their convertibles and went home.

Not the four of us. We returned to Shortstop, a dive bar where we met before the game started. After a game full of beers, Deacon and I did a few shots of Jameson. Speaker went home to pluck his eyebrows, and Heath took us to a bar in Hollywood.

Deacon works at this bar, so between rounds of Jameson, we chatted up the staff. Which was fantastic. Until a six-hundred pound beast of a woman wedged herself between our seats. I don’t know what we talked about, but I couldn’t wait to leave. So I handed Deacon a crisp c-note, which he exchanged for a wad of singles.

It was time to see some ladies. We jumped in a taxi to Jumbo’s Clown Room. This is apparently where strippers go to die. While wandering around Los Angeles, I wondered where the city hid the ugly women. Apparently, the place is Jumbo’s. Some weird, weird, weird ladies. But that didn’t stop me from using up that wad of singles (and then some).

We went back to Deacon’s and hung out in his building’s courtyard, drinking water and more Jameson. I puked into the potted plants and tried heading back into the apartment to pass out. Problem was, we got locked out. We had to tear open a screen and break in.

This morning I woke up with an awful hangover. I thought that the grease from a Big Mac meal at the airport would fix me. Wrong.

I sat in business class in pain. The plane pulled away from the gate, and I started feeling even worse. I turned to the guy next to me who had an empty super-size McDonald’s cup and said that I had the stomach flu and might need the cup. He didn’t charge me for it. But he did look away as I filled that cup with my lunch. We weren’t even off the freaking ground. So I had to hang onto that cup for another 20 minutes, when the plane was 35,000 feet above ground. Not good times.

I slept and sweated the whole flight. Then as the plane began its descent, I used the barf bag. And, of course, needed to hold onto it until we reached the gate. On the way off the plane, I took two more bags, expecting to use them in the taxi ride home.

Despite the driver weaving in and out of traffic, I survived.

I see that Fred Lewis hasn’t entered tonight’s game yet. I wonder if he, too, had a rough night. That cheater.