Tuesday, July 29, 2008

What Happens in Memphis...Gets Re-told Here

Nothing groundbreaking took place over the past few days, but a quick chat with an old friend Monday night brought back one of my all-time most “WTF?” memories.

Almost two full years ago now, I went to Memphis for a full week on business. In truth, to say “on business” feels to me like utter bullshit since it was essentially a week-long conference in which I was really only required to pretend I was paying attention for about six hours a day before being turned loose. Most days after each conference session became their own “how much can we drink and yet still be able to find the hotel afterward” sessions, and between the beer and the barbecue I actually came back home and weighed six more pounds according the scale.

That said, there was one evening where something else happened entirely.
On Wednesday (third day of the actual conference), things ran a little long. A presenter was late, another group actually attending the conference somehow got lost after lunch (which was catered at the hotel; explain that one)…point is, we got out that day a full two hours later than usual. The group of guys I had and would continue to go out and party with asked my preferred plans for the night, to which I replied “I don’t know, but I’ll catch up with you later. I need a quick nap.”

Well, the quick nap turned into a four hour snoozer, where I woke up in my now dark hotel room feeling as if Elvis himself had placed a visit and beat the shit out of me. I tossed and turned for a little while, hoping I’d either fall asleep or die, but in the process I accidently rolled over the remote which turned on the TV, and because the asshole who previously watched it (quite possibly myself) had the volume up apparently for Helen Keller, I ended up scaring the living shit out of myself and sprung up out of bed with all the eloquence and grace of a retarded rhino.

Now awake, obviously, I grabbed my phone and headed down to the main lobby with every intention of calling one of my “conference boys” to meet up with them at whatever (hopefully close-by) drinking establishment they were currently at. However, upon arriving near the front desk and in full view of the all-glass main entrance, I noticed the ever-familiar lights of an ambulance. I darted outside, letting curiosity get the best out of me, and was surprised not at the sight of the ambulance truck itself, but of the two male EMTs laughing their asses off while leaning up against the side of the building.

“Is…everything…okay?” I uttered, still groggy and somewhat achy from the possible assault by the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll himself just hours ago.

The laughing continued, as I wasn’t sure they even acknowledged my presence for what seemed like another five minutes. Eventually the one closest to me shaped up a little, walked toward me, and placed his hand on my shoulder. “With this job, you see the CRAZIEST shit from business travelers, man.” Hand slowly removes itself from my shoulder, man slowly saunters toward fellow EMT, and uncontrollable laughter continues. Also, the slight headache I had after the nap begins to worsen.

I immediately went back to my room, took five Advil, roughly six shots of worth of vodka (the only alcohol I could find in the room, most likely my roommate’s) and buried my head in a pillow. I awoke 13 hours later in a cold sweat, reciting various lines from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and was an hour late for the next day’s conference activities. Yay me.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Another Goofy Wingman Tale

I don’t pretend to be the best with women in general. Like most average-looking guys, when out and about on weekend nights, I just try and strike up conversations with girls I either find attractive, or just seem for whatever reason to have a pretty neat personality. I don’t go all emo on myself if these “talks” don’t happen to go anywhere, nor do I begin to consider myself Fabio Jr. just because the girl in question is still talking or even openly flirting with me after some time. In fact, this would probably be my biggest piece of advice for dudes out there; just take it easy. My uninspiring ass has gotten laid plenty of times by simply being “the cool, casual customer” in a bar or club. The goal is not to act aloof, but to calmly demonstrate interest while taking the attitude of “hey, I’m having a good time tonight regardless.” The type of women who react to a guy being incredibly forward from the initial contact (or if the girl approaches you with a “take me now” attitude) are generally the type that will take you home and fuck you 37 times until sunup, and then kick you out as if they realized you look like Gilbert Gottfied. Trust me on this. I personally am not looking for a relationship at this point in my life, however I don’t appreciate being treated like a penis with a warm body attached to it, and I like to get some sleep and give my wang a rest every now and then.

That said, my roommate had a lovely episode this weekend. I got back into town Saturday night and was greeted with a “let’s roll to Fremont” (something becoming quite common on Saturday nights recently). I’m told while on the way that he was supposed to meet up with an old girlfriend who recently had taken some interest in him again, but had blown him off today. My initial thought; this boy is somewhat depressed and could some tail tonight. After meeting up with some friends, he tells the brief story again and the rest of us come to unspoken conclusion (it’s a guy thing) that I came to earlier, and with nary a word we automatically label ourselves “wingman” for the night.

Now, the night itself is fairly uneventful until the bars start chasing the customers out after last call. A couple of our friends already left so our little group was down to three, and the roommate starts talking to this girl who was apparently looking for someone. The two talk for maybe five minutes, then the roommate walks her towards us and introduces her. Cool, I’m thinking, he might have this. She drops a couple BIG hints and flashes a green light so fucking big I’m sure some guys up in Vancouver saw it and started drooling. Our other friend and I turned to the roommate (who was driving us) and basically say “hey man, we’ll taxi or something home. You’re good.” Roommate inexplicably asks to tag along. I facepalm.

As much as I wanted to just ditch him, it was obvious he was either uncomfortable or just felt the night wasn’t over for us yet as a crew, because apparently this girl had offered us all back to her place, and he wanted to take her up on it. Okay, other friend and I think; we’ll drink a beer over there, and then calmly duck out and let my roommate make his move without the awkward presence of us. Well, “a beer” turned into about three or four more, and my roommate had yet to really make much of a move to a seemingly willing participant. Friend and I become a little uneasy as this whole charade is taking way too long to develop into something worthwhile for my roommate, but now both friend and I are a little drunk and don’t feel like grabbing a cab either. We decide to willingly move ourselves outside on this girl’s patio and basically freeze our ass off on a very cool summer night, waiting for my roommate to take the cue and finish the deed. So we wait. And wait. And wait. I actually fell asleep twice, only to be awakened by other friend’s rapid texting to other people, perhaps alarming others about how pathetic my roommate is being tonight. Eventually, between being cold and just flat-out fucking impatient, I pound on the glass sliding door to give out a warning signal, in case these two were going at it right in the living room, waited about ten seconds, and came in. To my complete disappointment, roommate is simply sitting on the sofa by himself, fully clothed, and looking perpetually bored. Before I can utter a word, he looks up but doesn’t make eye contact and says “I just wasn’t feeling it.”

Now, I can appreciate this. I love sex but hate forcing it, and quite often will pass up otherwise golden opportunities because I, too, “wasn’t feeling it”. I’m not gonna rag on a brotha’ for not giving in to our own selfish desire as friends to see him get ass because our own stupid asses were convinced it would make him feel better.

That said, I went to sleep that night at least a full three hours later than I needed to because roommate didn’t have the balls to just tell us this earlier. All night every single girl that so much looked in our general direction was directed towards him, and it should’ve been obvious our whole goal that night was to feed him “a chance”. It should be a man-law that when a guy sees his friends assuming the role of “wingmen”, you need call off the dogs if it’s completely unnecessary. Furthermore, and this goes for both girls and guys, when someone seems to be giving the “go-ahead” sign to you, do not answer it if “you aren’t feeling it”, for chrissakes. True, girls will often invite guys over to their place just for sake of capping off a night with another drink and nothing more, and I can tell he difference. This girl my roommate found WANTED more. All he had to do was say no and save our time.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Drifters Apparently Unfazed by 2008 Election

There’s usually about one day a week where for “work” I essentially make a one or two appointments in Seattle, and then spend the rest of the day essentially wandering around downtown. Yesterday I spent a little over half the day doing just this, and it was mostly uneventful until around noon when on the corner of James and 2nd I was approached by not one, but two equally annoying characters. One was a college-aged kid on I believe one of those “Get out the vote” campaigns (otherwise he’s living a very sad existence by standing on street corners simply asking people if they’re registered for amusement), and the other a drifter/homeless type with a penchant for cussing.

Me: (Walks up to corner, waits for the little Caucasian fella to light up)

Voting Kid: Hi sir! Are you registered to vote?

Drifter Dude: (steps in front of me and points right at Voting Kid) Are YOUUUU registered to vote?

Voting Kid: (slight pause) uh….yeah

Drifter Dude: (still uncomfortably right in front of me, now turns to face me) I guess this little douchebag is not only registered to vote, but is registered to piss me the FUCK OFF!

Voting Kid: (visibly annoyed) Anyway (to me), are you registered to vote sir?

Drifter Dude: Don’t answer him kid

Voting Kid: Excuse me?

Drifter Dude: (tries to put arm around me, I duck out of way) I’m talking to my friend here, PAL! Take your vote and shove it up your ass!

Voting Kid: Does your “friend” even know your name?

Drifter Dude: (pause, turns to face me again, and lowers voice) Do I kill him now, or later?

*Crosswalk Caucasian lights up*

Me: How about now…BYE!

Monday, July 14, 2008

I'm Sure Paris Is Nice...

I spend on average about 80-85% of my daily life decidedly NOT taking myself and the world around me seriously. I grew up watching just as much CNN as cartoons on Saturday mornings (before I was given a TV in my bedroom, my Dad was not just going to change the channel for me until his news fix was done), and as a result I spent more time than I should’ve otherwise as a youth worrying about anything from nuclear proliferation to what the hell went wrong in Mogadishu. Occasionally, I feel the need to be a retard at 24 years old to make up for lost time.

That said, not all of my time spent on the internet is used for fart jokes and cats with stupid
captions. One of my favorite bloggers is apparently about to hit the road again, and once again putting his life in potential danger with me sitting safely on my ass in my home country awaiting new entries of his experiences. Aside from the fact he’s a great writer and does his best to report/reflect on what he’s seen while eschewing as much political bias as he can (can’t say the same for his comments section), most of my checking-in stems from my own personal desire to visit many of the same areas he does. The idea of traveling abroad to lavish resorts in politically and economically stable countries doesn’t particularly excite me, and I wasn’t impressed or all that happy the few times in life I’ve already done so. I live in the United States; the bulk of my money is invested in banks which are FDIC-insured, my votes are counted, our economy is still un-Godly huge and vibrant overall in comparison, and of course there’s this thing called the Constitution and the Bill of Rights which further help guarantee a rather nice lifestyle. In short, I already know what living “comfortably” is like.

Vietnam is one of my first planned trips, mainly because I’ve read so many books on our little adventure there some 40-odd years ago. It's not Haiti, but it's also not quite the tourist-rich mecca that I'd prefer to avoid. It’s a beautiful country, but I would find it so fascinating and powerful to interact with someone knowing full well that my own father was part of an otherwise bullshit military intervention which possibly killed his or hers. I may not yet know the language, but eye contact and hopefully a smile would be enough.

Friday, July 11, 2008

From Maui Comes Reason

I think it was only 9:30 or 10:00 at night when overlooking the Seattle skyline from some party we had crashed on Alki Beach (it's located in West Se....aw fuck it, if you don't know the city) when the infamous Tyler, visiting from...I assume Hawaii...turned to me and said "Y'know, you should keep a blog or some shit since I only keep in touch with people via the internet".

I don't remember my next move, as its entirely possible I dismissed his comment to drool at a passing female or bitch at how warm my beer was, but about a couple weeks after his departure back into his own nomadic lifestlye, where even HE can maintain a website despite sometimes being in places where running water can be a luxury, let alone the internet, I decided the least I could do is try and keep up.

Most of my old friends from back east who may or may not read this with any regularity already know I had a brainfart sometime back in late '07 and decided I would move west. I still have brainfarts, but they usually cause a more "localized" disturbance (running across the street to the 7-11 at 3am for a hot dog and a slurpee when neither hungry nor thirsty). The fact is, I realize it's a little sketchy on my part to bail 3,000 miles away in a flash, and all the while answering your phone calls yet not really ever providing much of an explanation for why I moved and what I'm currently doing.

Whatever...some of you read my older blog when I was in high school/early college, and the fail was rather strong in that one. I don't expect to maintain this daily, nor fill it with my own activities or conquests only...this simply exists to fill my quota of incoherent rambling, to demonstrate that yes I'm doing okay and staying productive (mostly), and that I didn't move to Seattle and became a drifter in flannel, retracing the steps of early Pearl Jam and Soundgarden in some horrid attempt at rekindling my days in elementary and middle school.

Actually, that last part doesn't sound so bad if I'm randomly fired from my job anytime soon.