Our family camping trip last weekend was a lot of fun. It's the second time we have gone to this place. We like it because it's well maintained, quiet, and you can walk to the beach. Aside from the mosquitoes biting us at the campsite and the horse flies biting us at the beach, I would say everything went without a hitch. 

Erik always wants to stay up late enough to see all the stars. He always makes it late enough to see about half of them, and then a mere minutes after he falls asleep there are double. He did his darndest this time with a bunch of glow items to play with, but eventually he said, "I'm so tired. I'm sorry I couldn't stay up late enough." I reassured him that I was proud of him for listening to his body, and he was under no obligation to stay up any later than he wanted or needed to. He's an awesome kid.

The other day I played a bunch of tennis for probably the first time in at least 15 years. I met up with a couple of friends that I was playing online team trivia with. One guy I know pretty well, but for the other guy it was the first time I met him in person. He is really cool and gave me two really good tips that I'm going to use.

1. He had tires on his bike that don't require any air in them. To me it would be worth it to put those on to never have to worry about a flat or puncture, and to never have to go through the time of checking the PSI and pumping up before a ride. 

2. He also shared with me that he is coming up on one year sober. He said that he has had trouble supplementing one addiction for another, and his nicotine consumption went way up, sometimes in the form of Snus nicotine pouches. So, he found tea bags that you put under your lip, and the only drug in there is caffeine. I must admit that I throw a snus in from time to time, and I know it's a horrible habit. I'll be at a baseball game, for instance, and then decide at a certain inning that I'll just snus up for the remainder of the game to cut off the booze intake. But that strategy would turn out to be a terrible one if I ended up getting mouth, throat, or any other kind of cancer as a result. So, I ordered up a four pack of tea packets to try out. 

The tennis itself was mostly pretty terrible, but we had some pretty solid volleys from time-to-time, had a lot of fun, and got some good outdoor exercise. The courts have some cracks and weeds growing out of the ground, but courts few people know about that are right on the lake with this view are an amazing find.

What is really funny is how there are apartment buildings just beyond the fence on the other side, so if you accidentally launch a homerun (something you don't want) over the fence, you can land your ball right on someone's balcony or porch. Those folks probably never have to buy their own tennis balls. 

Tomorrow night I'll be heading out for a "guy's night" over by Choo Choo Train's place. It will be the first time all of us guys have been in the same place together since the Covid hit. I have Desi's first birthday party the next morning, so I plan on implementing the tea pouch technique at a certain hour so that I'm not a hungover sack of doo-doo at my own kid's party. 

Fare thee well, Seven Readers. 

Anyone else drinking entirely too much during this Covid stuff? I have bought a couple of handles of Tito's vodka in the last couple of months. I used to keep vodka in the house kind of like my parents kept vodka in the house. They would have it on hand for their one friend who came over to play bridge every few months and for the two bloody Mary's per year that my mom would take down. That was me. Old Tito Santana would last me like a year. Now I've crushed a couple handles! And that's not all I drink. There's beer, whiskey, and wine too. Don't get me wrong here; I'm not wasted all the time. But a few every night starts adding up, and I'm not the only guy getting after it because my building's recycle bin always looks like the morning after a frat party.

It's just that there's nothing stopping me from having a few libations just about every night. But I can't be doing that when the world goes back to normal.

Take tonight for instance. I was watching a bootleg Kodi version of the new Pete Davidson movie and was hit with the slightest pinge of sadness. Instead of thinking about what it is that was really on my mind I just poured a tall glass of some brown liquid and no ice. That never sounded that great to me before on a Wednesday, and now I'm loving how it makes my belly burn.

Other than an increase in the hitting of the sauce everything is pretty much okay. Mrs. Noisewater and I have been able to work from home, and our daycare let us send the kids back. Thank God! You know how hard it was with both of us trying to work from home with the two kids all day. In the morning the two of us would go over our schedules and it would be like:

Me: What you got today? I got a 9AM and a 12PM.
Mrs. Noisewater: 9AM and 12PM.for me too! Damn!
Me: Okay, no problem, I guess. We can put Erik on the iPad and Desi can . . . just chew on my laptop wire. I usually don't let him do that, but we got to get through these meetings.

Tomorrow Mrs. Noisewater and I are going to treat ourselves to a happy hour with our bikes and the bike trailer and then pick up the kids afterwards. It will be the first time the two of us have been alone and out somewhere since this thing started, and I'm pretty excited about it. We found a bar with a patio near the daycare. Don't worry, I won't be tanked. Just a couple drinks outside with the wife, trying to feel like normal happy people in Chicago at the start of the summer, how we are supposed to be feeling under normal circumstances.

How is everyone else doing? I'm sorry I've been such a crummy blogger. I'll try to be better. For real, tell me how you're all doing if you catch this post. Hope you and your families are well. 

Ozzy, the Bus, the Rockstar On the Bus, and the Sad Bodybuilder Woman On the Bus

Ozzy at last!

I went to see Ozzy Osbourne live for the first time. I have seen him play in Black Sabbath (his band based out of Birmingham, England before going solo, in case any of you don't know of the band who created heavy metal) twice, but I had never seen just Ozzy before. Now that I have, the only remaining and surviving huge bucket list guy is Sir Paul McCartney (a guy from Liverpool, another working class England town, called The Beatles, in case you know absolute jack squat about rock music). It's a little frustrating that 9 out of 10 times when I told people that I was off to see Ozzy their first response was a statement something like this:

1. "Can he still sing?"
2. "Will you be able to understand what the hell he is saying?"
3. "Do they have to drag his old bones out and prop up his mortal remains?"

When in reality:

1. Yes. He sounded just fine to me.
2. Ozzy is actually far more coherent when he sings. It is kind of like if you have ever known someone who stutters but does not do so at all when he or she sings. Ozzy has always seemed more comfortable on stage being Ozzy than when he is walking about being John Osbourne. It is like a lot of comedians who are so confident and quick witted on stage but then do not know what in the heck to say at a cocktail party. Also, the Ozzy most people know was from a reality show called "The Osbournes" where he was stumbling about and had a hard time forming sentences. This is because he was falling back into his drug addictions and was at a pretty much all time low during that period. Pull up just about any other video of him, and he is very charming and downright hilarious. Intentionally funny, that is. Not a caricature of himself that he was marketed as after that damn show. But to be honest I could not understand him very well last night, but I think it was the echoing sound of the shitty suburban venue. And okay fine, maybe a little bit because he is Ozzy.
3. No. I saw no one propping him up. Yes, he looks a little old when he paces back and forth a little hunched over, but for the most part you see that exuberance and that way an audience is never quite loud enough for him and see that youthful excitement in his eyes. "I can't fucking hear you!" he says over-and-over. Mrs. Noisewater joked, "Maybe he really can't hear them anymore." Okay, that's pretty funny. I'll admit.

Wow, that was a much longer rant than I intended it to be, but I just get defensive about Ozzy because he has been a part of my life for so long. It was similar with Harry Caray when he was calling games for the Cubs into his twilight years after a major stroke with splashes of dementia and Budweiser. When people made fun of him I would tell them that he was not always this old and he is an institution of the Cubs and baseball as a whole. He is a God damn Hall of Famer. He called games from a fan's perspective, which was innovative in its own right. I honest to god do not think people separate the man himself from Will Ferrell's intentionally over exaggerated impression. When people picked on him, they might as well have been hurling insults at my grandfather and it's the same with my grandpa Ozzy. Shit, another rant. Let's move forward with the actual tale I wanted to tell here.

One of my oldest and dearest friends who has been popping up in this blog since its inception, Heterosexual Life Partner (HLP), and I took a free party bus running out of a heavy metal Chicago bar to get to the pain in the ass venue deep into the suburbs. The giant yellow school bus finally pulled up to the bar very late with all of us standing outside with no explanation from staff. Checking our wristbands as we climbed aboard was an extremely muscular and powerfully drunk woman in a tight-fitting shirt showing all her hard work at the gym. She for sure was twice as strong as me physically and had muscles in her face that I'm not sure how to get, but there was a sadness and vulnerability about her. She was stumbling up and down the aisles trying to remember people's orders and then stumbling back to the front of the bus to fetch the beers out of the cooler. Swaying back and forth leafing through change in her fanny pack, she told us that it was her dog's birthday. Without any of us asking any follow up questions she lowered her head and revealed, "She died in my arms today" and started weeping uncontrollably. A woman said something to the effect of, "I'm so sorry" and muscular bus bartender dove into her for a well developed upper body strength, vice grip hug. Whoever was next to that customer must have said "me too" because our mourning libations distributor burrowed into that customer for yet another deep hug.

This is not an actual picture of bus bartender. This is, in fact, Nicole Bass , an unfortunately deceased regular on The Howard Stern Show.

This was why the pour woman was so schnockered-drunk. She was in a state mourning. HLP and I were shocked that she showed up to work in her mental state. Luckily for her she has a job with a very lax policy on drinking. And weed smoking. She was offering free hits off her bowl. "Anyone need anymore beer? Or weed?" she would say. When the bus pulled up to the amphitheater she said, "The show doesn't start for a little while so you're free to stay aboard for a while. There's still plenty of beer and weed." She seemed like she needed some friends, but HLP and I had a date with Ozzy. When I wasn't sure if my sister was going to make it do to some severe back pain she was experiencing, HLP suggested we could sell or even give the extra ticket to the bus bartender, but then we realized she would be standing next to us all night crying. We had already checked the setlist and "Bark At the Moon" would be the very first song. Those canine related words were bound to send her into more crying or perhaps even suicide watch. She was best left on the bus looking after our beer and weed. 

This is the album cover that prompted a handy man my parents hired when I was a teenager to say, "Did you know your son is listening to Satanic music?" My mom, always the devout atheist, nodded politely and then laughed her ass of when she shut the door.

Oh, as it turns out joining us on the fun bus was the lead singer and songwriter of a fairly popular Chicago area band that enjoyed some national exposure in the late nineties and beyond. I will not say who it was to protect his anonymity, but HLP, being one of his biggest fans, was gushing a little over him. We were tickled that despite being a fairly successful rocker, he was riding the free bar bus like the rest of us. The rock star was very kind on the ride in like in a "I'll be nice enough to you where you don't tell people I was a big dick when you tell the story" kind of way." Then on the ride home he was nice in a "We should totally hang out sometime. Shit, I love everyone!" kind of way. He and his much younger and quite striking blond rocker-chick girlfriend were very well buzzed. She told us that right at the end of the show she was rather politely thrown out of the venue for peeing in the men's room. This has to be done sometimes when the line in the men's room is long. Someone must have snitched, but who? That has never bothered me. We are all God's creatures (if you believe in that sort of thing) doing what naturally has to occur when you pour way too much beer down your throat. Why should the female species have to wait longer to do so? It's an unfair and potentially harmful policy. 

This album cover used to scare and gross me out as a kid. What in the hell did he just take a bloody bite out of?

Rock star guy and I bonded slightly (in my mind) over hating Bruce Springsteen and hating the fact that Ozzy played nothing off of his second album, "Diary of a Madman," the final of two masterpiece records with Randy Rhoads, the late guitar prodigy taken from the world far too young by a coked up bus driver who fancied himself a single engine plane pilot who crashed the plane into the damn bus. Little known fact, I wanted to name my son Rhoads until I learned that Tom Morello, lead guitarist of Rage Against the Machine had stolen my idea, and I stay stolen regardless of the fact that he thought of it first. In any event, rock star guy and I were singing a number of those songs we had wished we heard on the ride home. And we sang all the songs that came on the radio as if they were all the best things on earth even though they were very similar songs to the ones we heard on the way in when we were far less buzzed and were engaging in polite and much more quiet conversations. 

Rock star guy and his girlfriend were talking about making a trip to the Liars Club (the spot where HLP called home and our favorite place on earth for so many years in our late 20's and roughly all of our 30's) later that evening, but HLP and I now have wives and kids at home who would prefer us to not be like the walking dead the following day. Rock star guy is a little older than us, to be honest, but he can get away with acting like a rock star because his job is actually: rock star. Plus it is probably best that we stopped glomming onto him and his girlfriend and allowed them to enjoy one another. Their relationship looked very fresh and exciting for them and the added company of two drunk-daddy fans would likely have worn thin for them after the bus ride was over if it hadn't already. 

------------------------------------------

Okay, rock stars. Hope you have enjoyed this story. I do realize it was an extremely lengthy post with many a digression, but I think when the writer and storyteller in me lies dormant for so long, a stored up monster ejaculate of words is bound to be the result. Keep rocking and barking at the moon, my deer blog buddies. 

Shit-Canned At the Grocery Store

So far I have made good on updating the old blog once a week again. You know what helped? I have a repeating entry on the calendar in my phone that reads, "Update your blog, you fucking fuck." It helps to capture that anger at myself so that my future self is reminded how mad past self is at himself. And that might be the dumbest most confusing sentence I have ever written on here, but get used to it. Because it will now be weekly again.

The other day I went to the grocery store with Baby Noisewater, and after spending an insane amount of time in traffic, I decided I had earned a drink. We have one of those fancy grocery spots with a bar inside complete with a full band playing. By 5pm it's nearly impossible to get a seat at the bar. So what a lot of customers do is get an adult beverage and sip it whilst they get their shopping done. Since it was a balmy summer evening, I decided a margarita would hit the spot.

As I'm midway through finding all the items on my list I suddenly realized that I was quite drunk. On only one drink! To me, this mason jar had to have been 80% tequila, but maybe it was a combination of a very stiff drink and a very weakened tolerance. Dr. Ken before child was going out every Friday and Saturday night. With-child (that sounds pregnant) Dr. Ken really ties one on maybe once a month. The right thing to do would be to set that glass of demon rum on the bar, but the cheap-ass and drunk-ass in me said, "We can't let this bad boy go to waste, now can we?"

I like to let Baby Noisewater pick out his fun grocery cart: Taxi, police car, fire engine, or pink car. If he picks the pink one, totally cool with me, but this time he went with the taxi. He was reaching over his steering wheel that doesn't do shit for my 'Rita and saying, "Juicy!" I tried to explain to him that it was "daddy juice" and that it was "yuck." He wasn't convinced. I was looking for some frozen fruit for smoothies. The prices are a lot better at the local members only bulk store, but I needed some now. I actually said out loud, "These prices stink!" Then Noisewater started shouting, "Prices stink! Prices stink!" He was hollering"stink" about their prices and I was stinking drunk. We were not a desirable customer combo in the fancy grocery store at this point.

Have you ever noticed that when you're drinking you want to talk people more, and if no one is around you end up talking to yourself? Well, as a social drinker that's how I operate, and having a kid in your cart is pretty much free reign to jabber to yourself like a nut. "How about some bananas? Those look a little ripe, and those shits are organic. Fuck that." Nobody bats an eye when they see you have a baby in your cart along for the ride. And forgive me if I've talked about this before, but people give you a lot of breaks when you're a dad. Everyone helps me out when I'm out and about with my kiddo. Holding doors, offering to help me carry my stroller off of the train. Sadly, I don't see this sort of support for our moms out there, and I think it's because it's expected of them to go it alone out there. Fucked up, right?

I'm going to post you a video for you to give you an idea of how goofy Baby Noisewater and I are and how much fun we have together. Just to explain, his grandfather had recently gotten him saying  Geronimo and cowabunga when he pushes him on the swings at the park. Baby Noisewater just knows inherently that cowabunga is funny word. I'm proud of him because he talks a lot for his age, he is polite, he is friendly, and he is loving. All that is great. But the number one thing by far that makes me proud is that he is funny. That's important to me. Tell me he is not funny in this clip? That gag of him biting the book is hilarious and then he says, "eat." He had never done that before. It just came to him. Quite the natural improv. The guy seems to know what gets a laugh out of people, and then he beats it to death like a dead horse, just like his old man. He's a good dude and a solid shopping companion when I'm all burracho'd up on a potent margarita, crossing items off of my grocery list.



It's Friday, my Seven Readers. Tip something back and enjoy it. I booked a sitter and I'm taking the lady out for a nice dinner. What do you have on tap?

Team Strike Force and One of the Best Summers of Dr. Ken's Life

Many moons ago some friends and I played in a coed softball league and drinking team.  I'm not making a joke here; The sponsor bar actually kept track of how much all the teams drank after each game, certain types of drinks were worth different points, and the highest point getting team would win a free party for all their friends.  Hence, at the end of the season there would be a champion on the diamond and another in the bar.  This is not something that would be allowed now, and it probably wasn't allowed back then seeing as it encourages competitive binge drinking.  Team Strike Force finished near the bottom in terms of our record, but our drinking statistics were the stuff of legend.      

We weren't anything to brag about when it came to playing the actual softball games, but we did have one guy who was maybe the best player I've ever seen.  He could scoop up a ball on the run from anywhere, and throw from deep in the outfield to hit any plate he wanted right on the button.  Plus every time he stepped up to hit it was an automatic extra base hit.  Come to think of it, his girlfriend (now wife) was a really good player.  The rest of us were just biding our time to prove we were worthwhile at the bar immediately following the mere formality of the actual softball game.   

These were the two best moments on the field (because all the other memorable moments were at the bar):

1. One guy's girlfriend (also now wife) had no baseball experience whatsoever, so naturally we put her at catcher.  She was one of those people who could never get past pointing the open side of the mit straight up instead of turning the wrist inward so the open hand faces out.  You know, so you don't worry about plunking her in the face when you throw to her?  Consequently, she was very rarely able to catch much of anything, usually jumping out of the way to avoid getting hurt if you threw to her.  For this reason, the pitcher typically covered home in the event of a play at the plate. 

The RIGHT way

However, one time our stud player with the rifle arm sent one home with a runner on third and first and second base open, and our favorite female catcher was our only chance to tag the runner out.  She stepped up to the front of the plate, actually caught the ball, and jumped up and down saying "yay" as the runner trotted in behind her untagged.  There was no force at home, so she needed to apply a tag.  Nobody on our team cared because it was the funniest thing we had ever seen, and we didn't want to spoil her joyous moment of catching a softball.  Like I said, we sucked.

We would not have challenge the real Strike Force to any athletic event.  Except drinking. 

2. Then another time we were playing our arch rivals.  They had a guy on their team that was friends with a girl I dated not long before that team started.  This guy cheated on his girlfriend with a number of girls, including the one I was dating.  Not at the time I was seeing her though, but maybe.  Who knows.  She was not such a good girl for me, but at the time love was blind and I was young and stupid.  He was a butt hole on the field as well as off because he was like the coach figure, encouraging all his male players to take walks.  When you're a grown man you swing the bat.  That is what you signed up to do, right?

Also, he would yell at the girls when they screwed up.  This made us all really mad, and we found ourselves consoling his girls when they would get on the base paths and yelling at him to take it easy.  It made for a strange dynamic where the score of the game didn't matter; all that really mattered was that this a-hole drop dead.  Then there was another line drive single hit out to center field to our one good player who came up firing the ball towards home plate as Captain A-Hole ran home from third.  Boom!  The ball plunked him square in the back, and he winced in pain as he scored the run.  None of us gave a damn that he scored.  In fact, we were all cheering him getting hit with a ball.  You see, our guy is good enough to have gotten him out.  He chose to peg him in the back from fifty yards; He was that good.  It could very well have been the single most impressive athletic achievement I have ever seen and certainly the most rewarding.

We lost that game and many others that season, but again, in the bar we were champions.  I will never forget the two highest point-getters were a table tapper of Saint Pauli Girl, and a bottle of Tsingtao, a horribly skunky Chinese beer that led to wicked hangovers the following Friday morning.  Win or lose, our table would be littered with table tappers and buckets upon buckets of the green Chinese death juice: Tsingtao.  Then we would all text each other the next day how General Tsingtao had beaten us down with yet another crippling hangover.  But we would do it all again the following Thursday for the good of the team because champions fight through adversity. 

I remember one bye week (a week where our team didn't play) I still went up to the bar to make sure we at least got a few points.  I brought a girl with me who wasn't a heavy drinker.  She could only muscle down one Tsingtao that I insisted she order, and I powered back the other four in the bucket.

In the final week of the season we were eliminated from any chance of winning on the field, but we were very much in the running to win at the drinking.  The only team who had a chance at catching us was the arch rival team.  To make sure we beat those jerks we set up an evite (remember those?) and got all our drinking buddies up there.  We let all our friends know that if they helped us win, they would all be invited to the free party we would earn on a Saturday night for $500 of free boozy fun!  There were five or six tables full of friends for that last night to earn points, and some of those friends were very tangential.  We were marketing wizards and very heavy drinkers. 

And we "must have" bought a hundred that night.

The culminating pivotal moment did not come on the field; It came when Captain A-Hole from the team we hated came over to our table counting up all those buckets and table tappers and he asked, "Shit, you guys aren't team Strike Force are you?"  "You're damn right we are," we all said and a loud cheer roared through out our section of the bar.  Arch rival team only had five or six people to our giant hoards of booze hounds.  It was a lock for Team Strike Force.  We won that "free" party to drink whatever we wanted through paying for tons of types of beer we didn't like every Thursday night.  If you did the math, we likely lost a lot of money, but you can't put a dollar amount on being drinking champs and having that much fun.

I can't run around the bases as fast anymore, I certainly can't drink that much on a Thursday these days, but I can always can look back on that summer as one of the best of my life.  Let's put it this way, If someone asked me right now if I would rather be the first man on Mars or be transported back to the summer of 2005 to watch that guy get pegged with a softball in the back and tip back some celebratory horribly skunky Tsingtao, I would have to give it some serious, serious thought.      

Set Your Blasters To . . . Fun!

I was in a cab on my way to meet some friends at a bar and chatting with my cab driver.  He was lamenting about there being no laser tag in Chicago.  Yes, a grown-ass man who is dying for some laser tag.  They have them in the suburbs because there are more kids out there, but I was telling him that if they had one in Chicago proper, it would need two things.

The sport of laser tag is perfectly integrated.  

1. Booze.  The thing about Chicagoans is that most any activity when coupled with alcohol suddenly becomes doable.  They have a place not far from me where you can learn how to paint, and it's always packed.  You know why?  Because you can bring your own wine, set it next to your easel, and paint happy, drunk trees.

2. It would need a fun gimmick of some kind, and I'm thinking "Star Wars."  Who wouldn't want to play Rebels against The Empire and dress as a bunch of storm troopers and Vader against Han, Luke, and Leia?  And Chewbacca!  Who among you would not put on a hairy wookie outfit, strap on a crossbow, and run around the halls of the Death Star, howling and shooting storm troopers in the face and balls?  And the bar in there could be the Mos Eisley Spaceport Bar!  A guy could drink blue stuff and cut off arms all night long in a place like that.

I swear to God, Greedo.  I will shoot you right in the green penis.

 The cab driver said that was a great idea and asked if I was in marketing.  "No."  I replied.  "I'm just a drunk who knows how to have a good time."

These Are the Top 10 Awful People At the Bar. The People That You Meet Each Friday.

10. The Jukebox Saboteur.  Some jerk played In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida three consecutive times, but no one there will fess up to it.  More than likely he keyed that up and left to another bar just to stick us with 19 minutes of crappy drum and organ solos.

9. The Jaeger Bomber.  You have already told this guy that you don't want to do any shots because you have to go into work the next morning, but every time you turn around there is a tray of shots coming your way, and usually something disgusting like Wild Turkey.  You see, the Jaeger Bomber is not happy until we're all slobbering drunk and peeing on ourselves.  Like him.

8. The Barfly Loner.  He sits there alone every single night, knows all the staff members by name, and he is sipping his drinks and slowly killing himself.  And that's totally fine, so long as he doesn't talk to us.  It's when he chimes into everyone else's conversations that he becomes a problem.  We know, you have it all figured out and know the answers to all the world's problems.  But why haven't you found out how to avoid spending all your time and money perched at the end of this dark and dirty bar and dying a lonely death?

7. No Game and No Quit.   Sometimes the ladies just want to go out and have a few drinks, maybe dance a little, and yes, meeting some cute guys is a bonus.  However, you have got to know when your very presence has begun to ruin their night.  There are some guys out there who just don't know when to cut bait and move on.  Some men will tell you that all women are bitches, but the truth is they have to resort to being a monster bitch just to get guys like this to go away.

6. The Ping Pong Ball: This guy just doesn't seem happy with any bar you've gone to all night long.  The minute you walk in, he has immediately surveyed the scene and decided that there aren't enough women in there, the TV's aren't in high def, the bartenders aren't good looking enough men's room attendant has shitty mints, and the hardwood floors need to be refinished.  So he keeps convincing the group to bounce to another bar, which will be another one he will hate.  It seems the Ping Pong Ball is content spending more money and time on taxis than in bars.

5. The Stumbler.  He is blind drunk, falling over, making no sense, throwing up and falling asleep, but he won't leave!  If the bouncers won't do the right thing, sometimes someone in his group of friends needs to physically grab his pickled ass and show him to a cab, and usually tell the cab driver where he lives and maybe pay him (as it doesn't seem as if he is capable of doing anything on his own at this point).  Once everyone has had a good laugh and stored up enough stories to thoroughly embarrass him the next time you all get together, it will be well worth it to send this man home and absolve yourselves of babysitting duties.

4. The Inescapable Bad Conversation Guy: He has honed on you.  Yes, he has chosen you to share his wisdom of a particularly boring topic, be it to which route to take to shave 3 minutes off your commute, who to draft in fantasy football, or how to totally own the chumps in your condo association.  You have tried going to the bar to get a drink and going to take a pee, and you really didn't have to do either one - you just wanted to get away.  But he will keep finding you because he has you pegged as someone too nice to tell him to please put more beer in his mouth and make less boring words come out of it.

3. The Crop Duster.  The drinks are flowing, the music sounds good, everyone is looking beautiful, but suddenly there is the foul smell of rotten eggs blasting out of someones diseased intestines, and everyone is pulling their shirts over their noses, clearing out an entire section of the bar as fast as possible.  And the worst thing about the Crop Duster is that he never owns up to it, so you could be talking to someone and will have to convince him/her that it wasn't your own putrid ass that just unleashed hell.

2. Fishhooks in the Pockets/Alligator Arms.  You're out with all your friends, and every time it's this guy's turn to buy, he is sneaking outside for a smoke, to the men's room, or anywhere he and his wallet won't have to get involved.  Or better yet, he wants $12 craft beers all night, but when it's his turn, it's Bud in cans all around for his men.  What a swell guy!  

1. Dude Thinks It's Roadhouse.  Some guys out there don't feel their night is complete unless they have gotten into a fight, and it doesn't matter what it's about.  Sometimes it's insane jealousy, others it's about who's sports team is better, but It could be an argument about something as stupid as Mac VS PC, Star Trek VS Star Wars, or "Little Mermaid" or "Lion King."  What matters is that they are finally going to get to punch someone in the face and possibly get arrested, where they could very well land in the same cell as the guy they fought and kick back up that "Little Mermaid" debate and ring the bell for round two.  Listen, pal, you'll never be as cool as Dalton in "Roadhouse," you'll never rip out a throat, but you will either land in jail, get beat up by four bouncers, and have to explain your shiner at work on Monday.  So just relax and drink your beer, maybe try some yoga or something, and put away your dukes.

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A) All this being said, I think I have been, I have been 7 out of 10 of these fellas, and sometimes more than one in a night.  But at least I'm conscious of which bar behaviors are bad, and that is half the battle.  How about you?

B) Honorable mention goes the Overzealous Drinking Game Guy.  He wants everyone to play his drinking games, but we just want to have good conversation.  Is it possible he has nothing worthwhile to say, and that's why he insists on these stupid games?  And what's more, I don't need rules to tell me when to pour gallons of booze down my gullet.  I do just fine without being forced, so shut up, right?  Should this guy crack the top 10, and if so, who should get bumped out?

C) Any other additions that you would like to submit?

Writer's Bars

Mrs. Noisewater and I were at a book sale outside of a church on Sunday, and I picked up a book called "The Chicago Way" about a private detective in Chicago.  As it turns out, the character in the story drinks too much at too many bars - just like me!   

At one point he references Kelly's Pub.  Hey, I've been there!  The managers there love heavy metal and were cranking up some Diamond Head for me the last time I was in there.  They also sold my buddy, Night Train, a rogue tall boy of Coors Light that he spotted in the fridge and no one working there had any idea how it got there . . .

Another time the main character winds up ordering a Guinness at Cullens.  I know that place too.  For whatever reason, it was the best bar to go to on a Sunday night if you happened to have that Monday off, decided to just take it off, or simply wanted to drink like an animal on a Sunday.  My partner in crime back then always seemed to get lucky there on a Sunday, but it just wasn't a good home game to me.  He would actually get laid totally randomly. late afternoon on a Sunday, and I had to tip my cap to him.

Later the author makes mention of The Hidden Shamrock.  Come on!  That's just down the street from me, and I have been there dozens of times.  The bartender in the story was a full blown Irish gal with the accent and everything, but when I was going there regularly it was an Irish American red-head.  We had a thing one night (on a Sunday!) but it turns out she was just using me while she was on a break from her boyfriend.  But, whatever, us boys don't get as upset about being used because it's like, hey, I got laid, right?  We're pretty simple beings when you come right down to it . . . 

I was at a party the other night, and there was this insufferable attractive woman with no filter blurting out all kinds of perverted things about herself.  I know what you're thinking, how is this a problem?  Well, she was the type who has no charm or wit so she has discovered that telling us about her boyfriend's big wang is the only way she could hold anyone's attention.

I don't even know how she got onto this next topic, but I'm guessing there was zero segue like all the other things she spewed. She began to tell us about being able to shoot ping-pong balls out of her vagina.  Not because she is a stripper, just because she wants everyone to know what a sexual dynamo and social pariah she is.

Trapped on a cramped balcony with this ding bat for an hour with her attention-seeking behavior led me to blurt out something strange of my own.  "I could shoot those ping-pong balls out twice as far out of my anus."  This rattled her.

"No you couldn't!"  She exclaimed.   "I do Kegel exercises!"   

"So.  I take like three dumps a day.  I have power out of my butt hole like you wouldn't believe.  I would launch those suckers down that whole hallway."

"That can't even be done," she said.

"What's it worth for you to find out?  You go first."

It's summer, and I was finally walking around on the streets outside my apartment at 1AM on a Thursday and not in my bed being woken up by the drunk Chicagoans like I usually am around that time.  What have I learned?  Well that's a lot of saying "Wooooo!" for a Thursday.  Thursday is also the night that the alley outside my bedroom window often becomes Drunk Fight Club.  As you may have seen in some previous posts, sometimes I will open up the window and get my two cents in, settle some arguments when I can . . .

The thing is, most people have to get to work Friday morning, but 22-year-olds don't care about any of that.  If they can stay out all night and maybe even scare up some ass, who cares if they're a little tired the next day?  And even if they are a little run down, they will just have a bloody mary right after work on Friday, and then they're right back in the game, perhaps a vodka Red Bull or two if that doesn't do the trick.  You can fight off hangovers so much easier at that age.

To be honest, I'm never mad when I wake up from the "wooooo's!"; I just wish I was 22 again . . .

Sleep Peeing or Pee Walking?

Last night a friend was telling me that she had an old friend stay over for a weekend, and after a night of hard drinking, this friend did some "sleep peeing" in a couple spots in the apartment.  My friend said she had no idea it happened until a day or two later when she smelled pee and first discovered that her friend had opened up the oven door and peed all over it.  

Sniffing for more pee, her nose led her to her entertainment center where her friend had peed all over the place, ruining the DVD player.  

Now, those two places are nothing like toilets.  The oven door lowers down, whereas a toilet seat lifts up.  And then the entertainment center, did she eject the little slide and pee right into the DVD slot because that is nothing at all like a toilet.  

This leads me to believe that this was an intentional pee pee attack!

"Dang!  Almost made it to the oven."

What do you all think?  Anyone have any "pee walking" stories?  Also, which do you think is a better term, sleep peeing or pee walking, and why?

That Time I Got Thrown Up Upon

A few weekends back we had a Chicago area bachelor party for a former roommate of mine who's formal bachelor party was a camping in the cold excursion (all Chicagoans took a pass on that one).  Being a long time drinking resident of the area, he asked me to be the point man on planning.  I said I could probably find a super cheap route where we could pay $15 to drink all we want for a few hours, to which he said, "I don't want to do an all-you-can-drink because that encourages binge drinking.  I really don't party much anymore."  That's actually what he said . . .

So he and all the guys arrive at my apartment, we're sipping some beers, and it was kind of sweet how Former Roomie was gushing over his bride to be, right down to the fact that he loved her big boobs.  He proceeded to show us a (fully clothed) picture.  Yup.  Big ones.  Then he makes an announcement: "Listen, guys.  No shots tonight.  I'm serious."  I had planned on doing maybe just one as a celebratory thing, but zero is just fine too.

Former Roomie said that inviting anyone was cool so Night Train met us out.  I forgot that Night Train orders shots nonstop so before I could think to tell him about the rule for the night, Night Train saddles over to us with a tray full of one ounce booze cups known as shots.  Former Roomie didn't even hesitate going against his own rule and immediately knocked down the shot of Jameson, or some other brown, vile liquid, and it wouldn't be his last of the night . . .

Oh yes, he did have one other rule: We had to end up at Liars Club before the end of the night.  This is a rule I liked even better than the first because, as long time readers will know, this is my favorite place on earth.  And this was the perfect night at Liars: Everyone was dancing, the music transitioned perfectly between Daft Punk and Motorhead, and all of us were having a ball.  Except Former Roomie who said that what he really wanted to do is go somewhere with a jukebox to use a phone application that he has to pick songs.  Despite the fact that my other good friend, James Douglas Morrison, and myself were dancing our faces off, we decided to do the right thing and accompany Former Roomie and his cousin to an after hours bar with a jukebox to play with.

Two more robots called in sick.

Former Roomie selects his songs, and while I was excited to hear a live version of "Roadhouse Blues," when I heard a different version of the same song back-to-back, I should have known that he had become powerfully drunk.  Suddenly, I look across the table at him, and his eyes are wide, he looks scared, and while looking right in my eyes, he spits what I thought was some beer onto the table.  I thought this was a joke until I saw that there were in fact some chunks on the table.  As well as on my shirt.  James Douglas Morrison and I just headed for the exits without saying a word to anyone, even each other, as we went in cabs to go our separate ways.

The next day I asked James Douglas what in the hell that was all about, and he texted back, "I saw puke come across the table, and I was worried I would be next, so I got outa' there like shit through a Goose Gossage."  He has a way with words, that guy . . .

Goose: "Whelp, that's a rap on the evening, gentlemen."

I got another text from Former Roomie, and he said, "Sorry I had to leave suddenly.  It was a long night.  hahaha.  Did you stay much longer after I left?"  Well, odds are if he doesn't remember that we left before him, he probably doesn't remember puking on me, and best to just keep it that way.  No need to make the guy feel bad about anything on his bachelor party.  Just head on back out of state, nuzzle in those big boobs, and go back to saying not to shot(s).

I love drinking on airplanes.  To me, the perfect mile high drink is the gin and tonic because it calms the stomach problems that can occur with the altitude.  Also, cocktails are more fun because you get the little bottles of booze to pour into the bubbly and ice, and continuing to pour and drink gives you something to pass the time.  Might as well settle in there and make your tray your own little mini bar!  Sometimes you get one of those little plastic swords to stir with, and those are just fun as hell.

I don't like waiting for stuff so flying is hard for me.  Also, I am a tall drink of water, so I sometimes opt for two cocktails to soothe the pain in my knees.  After all, sometimes it's 1 for 8 and 2 for 11, and that just makes good economic sense right there.

On my last flight I tried to cash in some expired drink tickets to no avail, and forgetting to use those babies was just a God damned disheartening situation.

Does any of this make me sound like an alcoholic?

I'm just getting over one of the worst stomach flu's of my life.  I was puking and shooting out pure liquid poops for over 24 hours straight.  It was one of those deals where you get to the toilet and can't decide which need is more "pressing."  Should I sit down for a squirt dump and run the risk of barfing on my lap, or bend over the bowl for a puke and risk blasting a dump all over myself and the tile floor?

If you're still reading, I'm going to the Big Ten basketball tournament with some friends tonight who will be drinking, and although I'm like 90% better, I have decided to not partake in "the sauce" tonight to allow myself to recover.  

I really do hate not drinking when people around me are drinking, and it got me thinking, is it a worse situation for those who don't ever want to drink or for someone who has just decided that he doesn't want to drink?  I have had those friends who come out with everyone to bars, sometimes until four in the morning, and they never drink.  How do they do it?  I try to be understanding of the fact that when people are schnockered all around me and I'm sober, I have been that bad or likely even worse.  Still, I get instantly annoyed and want to drink myself closer to where they're at so I'm not annoyed anymore.  

UPDATE: I just finished this post when I got home.  I had a beer and a half.  

I was drinking like an animal last night and after last call, LaFontaine and myself decided we needed to pick up an expensive big ass beer at his apartment and come back to my place to listen to "Dark Side of the Moon" because he had never listened to the whole thing in his whole life - a fact I couldn't believe.  We listened to that and like 10 other records that were strewn all over the room when I got up around 1PM this afternoon.

I had a few glasses of wine at sushi with my mom, dad, and sister, and even though I'm tired and shouldn't go out again, I just know I will.

You know that scene in "Interview With a Vampire" where Tom Cruise is all frustrated with Brad Pitt because he is sucking down pig blood and shit to avoid killing people, and Cruise says "Make no mistake, you are a killer!"  Well, substitute killer for drinker, and that's kind of how I feel at times like this.

High Dive. Bomb's Away!!

If you have been reading this thing for a while, you know that I don't hide from you the fact that I drink and make bad decisions.  This started at an early age.  I was by my mom and dad's house yesterday, and when I drove past the private pool around the corner from them, I said to myself, "Oh yeah, that's the pool I used to break into for a swim at 2AM when I was drunk."  Now, that sounds like something a lot of kids do, but alone?  That's just weird.  And even worse is that I took dumps in the pool, which is just thoughtless because someone would have to start their morning cleaning up the dump that I should have taken in a perfectly good toilet.  One step worse is that I pooped off the high dive, which is a challenge to dangle your butt off the edge, twenty feet in the air, and then jump over your own poop.  I was more agile in those days but just as stupid. 

Someone found it.

I wish I could say I have grown up a lot since then.  I have, but it has taken a long, long time.  This Friday I didn't go out drinking at all, and then Saturday I got tired and went home early (for me), and I feel pretty good; might even make it to the gym, where I will swim and not poop. 

Godforsaken Updates . . .

- I had way too much to drink Friday and Saturday, and then I had some more on Superbowl Sunday.  That 3rd day in a row is always the one that catches up with you during the work week, and I know this, but you're not not going to drink for the Superbowl, right?  They need to move that darn game to a Saturday.  I was over at my sister's place and her piss poor neighbors all went home at halftime, and I started falling asleep after 4 or 5 Guinness.  Then her really fun neighbor came over with a bottle of Mike Ditka wine, so I had to try some wine made by "Da Coach."  I didn't have to drink from the next bottle of wine opened, but I did.

- I'm going to Austin, Texas later this month for the first time with LSD, who is finishing up school out in Los Angeles, in case you're a new reader or forgot.  We get together once a month in one of our cities or a neutral one, and this is one I'm really excited about.  The really fun neighbor I mentioned a minute ago heard that I was going there and said, "Ooh!  That's where they have all the bats!"  She is convinced that it is a city overrun with wild bats.  You would think I would have heard about that by now . . .

- My sister and I made fun of her, but it turns out she's right.  Just look at all those bats!

That Was One Drunk Sea Captain

Friday night I met Gung Ho out at the dueling pianos bar because I was anxious to meet his new 24-year-old girlfriend (we're slightly older).  If you haven't been to a good dueling pianos bar, you should give it a try.  They always have a couple of very witty and talented guys cracking jokes and taking requests, enough to give a man a serious case of pianist envy (did I make that up?  Probably not).  And just as a raucous night was starting to peter out, in saunters a pair of 30-something gay men, one in a ship captain's hat and both very drunk.  They were just sitting at their table, not talking to one another, looking like they were trying to take some deep breaths to avoid throwing up.  This is when I decided to write up a request saying: Can you play "Love Will Keep Us Together" by Captain & Tennille for those two boys at the back table?  That is when the evening kicked right back into high gear.


(Here is a video I found on Youtube of a night at Sluggers with people dancing with the pole on top of the piano.  I guess in this modern age you should be sure you won't be filmed if you decide to give pole dancing a whirl . . .)

The piano player with the Blackhawks jersey laughed his ass off at this notion, asked for the Captain's hat while he played that number, and launched into the song.  This was the Captain's cue, with or without the hat he brought, to dance around the stripper pole on top of the piano, drunkenly.  He then whipped his shirt off to reveal a pretty awful body and a plumber crack sticking out the back of his jeans.  It was looking like he was going to barf from all that spinning around or fall off and hurt himself, either of which would have made my night, but his partner (Tennille?) didn't seem amused or even interested in any of this as he continued to do his breathing exercises.  With a slight frame slab of a torso that went right up to his clean shaven bald head, Captain looked a lot like a real live dancing penis up there, and who would not be enthralled by that?  The security, that's who, and they came over and told Captain to put his shirt on and chill out, which he did but it wasn't easy because he continued to try to dance a little bit and he was drunker than hell; a drunk dancing penis trying to put on his shirt.

What a great night.  I woke up the next morning laughing, and when I saw my mom at dinner later that night, she laughed too when I told her about it.  Hope you enjoyed yet another tale from the bars, Seven Readers.  And now, Captain and Tennille . . .


(Doesn't Tennille sound like a bit of a controlling psycho type if you listen closely to the lyrics, like she might slice the Captain's dingy off if he ever strayed from the marriage?)

I Need a Little Help With Some Research

When you are standing at a bar, not sitting, but bellied up to the bar, how annoyed are you when there is no foot rest put one foot upon?  Three out of three men were extremely pissed off on Saturday night when the hipster bar we were at didn't have the God damn bar step.  Another guy couldn't believe he had to ask the staff to turn off the flipping Fred Estaire movie and put the Chicago Bulls game on, but that is another story.  One of the three actually said that his back will probably be hurting the next day for not having that all important-step to lean into and make everything okay.

How do you not have on of those things, for crying out loud?

 Thanks so much for leaving your thoughts on this matter in the comments.  With your help, I can make this an epic research project, maybe even get it published if I can get extensive research with 9 or 10 bloggers/drinkers polled.

Hit Me Up!

I haven't posted in a while, but here is the thing, I usually wait until I get at least one comment before going to the next one.  Eventually, I had to face the facts that no one cared to comment on Kerry King in Japan or platonic man love.  Now, you would think that would deter me from the topics that yielded zero results, but along comes another man-love post.  Just read the parenthesis if you care to know what in the heck we are talking about in these texts:

Doctor Ken: I am thumping you 16 to 7. (That is a fantasy football score.  I am so rarely winning so thought I would live it up until Sunday).  How is the in-law Thanksgiving?  Buffalo dip? (His wife makes this unbelievable buffalo dip and when she brings it, the container is practically licked clean and nothing else is even close to being done).

HLP: Just got under way: Forgot to make the dip.  How was Thanksgiving/Roadhouse? (I was texting him on Thanksgiving how I was flipping between football and Roadhouse and how I never felt like such a man)

Doctor Ken: That was going swimmingly until my dad demanded football only.  And right before the throat rip! (In "Roadhouse," Swayze, portraying a bad ass bouncer,  rips out the throat of an unruly bar patron.)

Doctor Ken (again): "Who is Mike Jones!"  That just came on.  Great disc.  So many vodka Redbulls back then, like we were subject of some diabolical science experiment. (Back when we were roommates we would listen to a lot of Built To Spill before going out.  There was one disc by this brilliant Idaho band that we got an early leak of where to keep it from being a full on bootleg before the release, the bootleggers would throw in some rapper named Mike Jones pipe in with boisterous "Who is Mike Jones?" every few minutes, usually right at an epic part.  This was annoying for the first few listens, but now he and I actually prefer it that way.)

HLP: "Hit me up!  281 . . ."  That vodka Redbull period took years off of my life expectancy.  (Mike Jones would often leave his phone number in his songs for fans to hit him up, as it were, as you can observe below.)



Doctor Ken: Hahaha.  Yes.  Our hearts are even more pissed off than our livers. (This is when people first started ordering drinks with alcohol and energy drinks, and we thought, because they made us feel so good, that we should just drink them all night.  We only figured out later that you should just have one, maybe two, through out the course of the night when you start to get sleepy.  When you knock those back all night, when you come home, your whole body is super tired except for your heart which has serious palpitations all night long). 

That concludes this texting conversation.  Hope you enjoyed it.  Hey, readers, do you have a friend who makes you laugh out loud consistently when you get a text?