Commencing Nowhere

Edge of 17 (Part 1)

2010-04-06T14:24:00.000-07:00

“Life goes by so fast/You only want to do what you think is right/Close your eyes then it’s past/Story of my life.” –Social Distortion, “Story of My Life”

We heard the sirens coming from a mile away. No one knew what to do. We were way out in the open along a broad two-lane road running through the middle of the area’s biggest housing development. There were a few trees here and there, and glimmers of porch lights illuminating the grass on one side of the road—meaning there was almost nowhere to hide, and few places to blend in with the shadows. We were dead meat for certain.

“Kroger, you moron, you were yelling when we rang that old lady’s doorbell. She fucking heard you,” the fifth dude shrieked.

“Shut the hell up, man,” I said back, feeling my heart palpitating and my palms clamming up. “Shit, I’m applying to college. That’s all I’m thinking about now, I must be crazy doing this crap! I don’t need another in-school suspension! I don’t need an underage!”

“Screw this,” Putnam whispered next to me putting me in a half-hearted headlock. “And shut up about that. We’re not even in school. What’s really gonna happen? Be rational here, man.”

The sirens got closer and closer. I saw flashing lights just a few hundred yards away. Blue. Red. Blue. Red. Blue. Red. The law was closing in quickly; we’d probably be in jail before the night was over.

“Fuck it, dude,” I said, staring at the flashing lights heading our way. “Let’s go bowling.” I took a head-dive under the closest pine-tree next to the industrial park across the street from a handful of boxy McMansions. Kroger followed right behind me, unsettling the frigid water from the needles above. We sat there shivering, getting soaking wet hiding in the mud underneath, hoping to God our entire bodies were concealed. Even as the old rainwater soaked our shirts, we didn’t move a muscle.

At any second, we reckoned, the police would be rolling up. The fifth guy and Putnam sort of moved behind the tree, hoping they’d be obscured by its shadows. And Keeley, our resident renegade, stood against the wall of some large warehouse casually puffing on a cigarette, using his body language to tell whoever might come by “Just try and fucking arrest me. My dad will own you.”

As we heard two cars make a right turn about three blocks away, we had the worst feeling that we’d be arrested for giving the neighborhood squares and their annoying little sons and daughters some innocent, 11th grade shit.

“Mother of shit,” Kroger whispered. “My parents are going to kill me.”

Four hours earlier, probably around 8:30, we were at some independent film festival our high school was having. It was a dreadful bore to say the least, but Keeley knew a kid who co-wrote one of the crap pictures we were enduring. He’d insisted we go because there might be some girl there who wanted to bang him. Why we had to sit through this garbage just so he could maybe get a phone number, though, was beyond the rest of us.

“Who dragged us to this ‘film festival’ or whatever?” Keeley yelled to me across four auditorium seats, forgetting that he’d been the one to get us here.

“You got us here, man,” I said, barely paying attention to whatever was on the screen. “Didn’t your friend help write ‘The Red-Rider’ or something?”

“Yeah, but still, I’m trying to meet up with that girl Clarissa,” Keeley yelled. “She said she’d be here, man.” But, alas, Clarissa was nowhere to be found, so we plotted our escape from the auditorium loudly.

“We should leave,” Kroger said, grinning at Putnam and me. “Keeley, your place?”

“You got drinks?” Putnam yelled loud enough for the whole theatre to hear. Two girls in front of us, decked out in local band t-shirts, tight jeans, and Chuck Taylors glared back at us through thick black-framed glasses as if they’d really been enjoying these pseudo-intellectual “art” films.

“Yeah,” Keeley shot back. “What do you think? Let’s roll, like, right now. I’m driving.”

“You don’t even have your license, Keeley,” Kroger said. It was true—most of us had had learned to drive when we were a year younger. Not Keeley. He was content to pay one of us a few bucks to cart his lazy ass to school everyday. While we’d all been cruising for almost ten months, he still hadn’t bothered taking the test to get his learning permit.

“Right, you’re driving me,” Keeley muttered. “Asshole.”

As the hipster girls glanced back at us disgustedly again, Keeley asked them to join us for a few beers. They sulkily rolled their eyes and looked away. “Fucking lame,” he said, loud enough for them to hear. We tip-toed out of the auditorium so that as few people as possible would see us taking off.

Within twenty minutes, we were back at Keeley’s mansion trying to raid his dad’s liquor cabinet and having a tough go at it. His old man, a chain-smoking cardiologist (not joking), kept his booze locked up in a closet in the basement. He left the Bailey’s, and what looked like a 20-year old bottle of Old Crow bourbon out in the open behind the dry-bar, but his good shit was behind closed doors a few feet over. Or so we thought.

Using the fifth guy’s soccer talents and a screwdriver, we got into the ‘good shit’ quickly.

“Keeley, there’s just a bunch of...uh...triple sec, and like nothing else!” the fifth guy yelled. “I can’t believe I kicked this fucker open for this crap! Motezuma?”

“And a thirty year old bottle of scotch!” Putnam exclaimed, grabbing it from the closet and examining the label. “I bet this is the real shit, man! Let’s drink this.”

“Yeah, I don’t know what he wants to do with this, but take a handle, that’s it,” Keeley said. “Don’t touch the scotch Putnam. My dad’s had that shit forever.”

“Triple sec?” Kroger asked. “Is that good?”

“It’s pretty awful, but we can nail this down straight,” I said. “Give it over. We’ll make margaritas without the tequila. Or the lime juice.”

We passed the handle of orange-flavored crap around for a minute or two, swilling down what we could and put on an actually decent movie. But the drinks, instead of relaxing us, were making us antsy. It was a Friday night, and none of us could stomach just sitting on the couch drinking 40 proof alcohol like it was a big deal.

“Is this what’s happening tonight?” the fifth guy said manically. “Let’s go do something. We need to do things. Things! ”

“What the hell do you do in Blue Acres?” I said to the fifth guy, taking another pull from the bottle. “And, Keeley, this stuff is toxic. It’s way too sweet.”

“Let’s just go out,” Keeley said. “We’ll take a walk around for awhile. There must be something to do. I think that girl Clarissa lives around here...”

“Oh, drop it with that shit, man,” Putnam said.

We got our jackets on and giggled our way back to the end of the street he lived on feeling the minor buzz from the crap we’d been drinking. The early April air blew back against us, and the only discernable smell was Keeley’s cigarette, one of a few he stole from his old man, smoldering in the breeze.

“Who lives over here?” the fifth guy asked us.

“Uhhh...”

DINNNNNGGGGGGGGG. Before we even turned our heads, fifth guy sprinted up to the door, banged the huge doorknocker a few times, and rang the doorbell once or twice. And with no warning, we started to run. Great, I thought. We’re playing ding-dong ditch. I’m a year from graduation and we’re going to go ring doorbells and screw with 45-year olds in the middle of the night. Totally fucking mensa.

“Oh Christ! What are you doing, man?” Keeley yelled. “That’s my neighbor! He plays golf with my dad, and I think he’s like 60. He gets up to piss like six times a night. He’ll definitely call the police.”

“Then let’s run!” fifth guy yelled. “Let him shake it out the window on us.”

After a five minute jog, all of us were wheezing uncontrollably. The fifth guy was the only one still standing, making fun of us for being complete pussies.

“I recognize this house,” he said nonchalantly. “Let’s get it.”

“What?”

“None of us even know what fucking street we’re on. We don’t live in this development,” Kroger barked back, coughing up half a lung. “Why the hell did we just run for five minutes to avoid getting caught?”

“That dude wouldn’t have messed with us,” I said, faking nonchalance, like I knew things would be fine all along.

“Yeah,” the fifth guy yelled. “They can’t run as fast as us.” We looked the other direction, checking the street for anyone looking at us suspiciously. When we turned back around, fifth guy’d all but disappeared. That is until...

DINNNNNNGGGGG.

“Nice!” Kroger yelled, rapidly getting in the spirit of being 12 years old again. He took two quick breaths, jumped in the air, and started running away from us, yelling “Okay, fuck it. I got this one.” He scampered down the street and rang some lady’s doorbell on some overpriced house. No lights. He rang the buzzer next door. Nothing.

“Okay, this is lame,” I said to Putnam. “No one’s even waking up. I haven’t seen one light come on yet.”

“Guess we need to make things more exciting. Let’s try out another street,” he replied. We all slowed down, looked around for a minute or two, and ran across one of the development’s main roads, and made a quick left onto another road.

“Alright, let’s go down a little bit farther, then,” Keeley said, motioning to his right. “I know a couple of the people on this next street. If we get caught, they’ll probably just laugh. Well, maybe. Or they’ll call my parents.”

We made our way down a large cul-de-sac with about five houses, and the fifth guy made a great suggestion: “Let’s each ring one and start running.”

“No. Let’s stay for a minute and watch chaos ensue,” Putnam said. “We can see how many lights go on then.”

We stood in the middle of the block, staring at all five houses, and...ready...set...go! each of us charged at one of the places ready to make some trouble.

DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! We heard the doorbells sounding in the night as we ran back toward the center of the block, looking for any signs of life, or people being miserably disturbed at 11:48 on a Friday night.

“Oh, we got them good!” fifth guy yelled. “Watch them call the cops. They won’t do it. Fucking pussies. Let’s knock down a mailbox, too! Just for fun, right? Just for fun!” Fifth guy was jumping around gleefully, tearing circles around us like Speedy Gonzales, acting like he hoped some dude might bring a .45 out of his house at any time and take pot-shots at us like that redneck in Dazed and Confused. Fifth guy, who we all barely knew through Keeley, was the source of entertainment for that early part of the night. To this day, for some reason, none of us can remember who the hell he was or what happened to him after our junior year of high school.

“Are you kidding me?” Kroger said. “Time to run, soon.”

“Yeah, good call,” I whispered to Kroger. “We’ll run when lights go on. Which is likely to happen at any second.”

We watched for a second though, and lo-and-behold, two second-floor bedrooms lit up. People in their bathrobes were scrambling around trying to figure out if the UPS man was ringing to deliver those $200 J. Crew orders they placed just in time for Easter. You knew what was going through their minds...

And in the middle of the night? What the hell is the UPS guy doing here doing here? Hold on, Ethel, let me see if it’s those goddamn kids again. The ones ringing doorbells in the middle of the night a few weeks ago, remember? They woke Joey up and he couldn’t get back to sleep all night! If it’s them, I swear....

They opened the doors, looked around, and babbled “Hello?” through sleep-induced stupors.

“HELLO?! Who the hell’s out there. Don’t think I don’t see you!” some middle-aged guy said, stepping off of his front porch ready to make a run at us.

“Okay, let’s go,” three of us mouthed to each other. We backed away slowly, and spun toward the take-off position.

We ran, and decided to cool it for awhile. We walked around on a few streets until we accidentally found ourselves on the main drag, a two-lane road with big houses on one side, and warehouses and industrial buildings on the other. A car came by here and there, flashing their beams at us so we’d move out of the road. As we jumped to the side for the umpteenth time, we heard a wailing sound cut through the clear, breezy night.

“Oh Jesus, I hear sirens,” Kroger whimpered. “They got us, man!”

“Bullshit,” Putnam yelled. “You’re just paranoid! They’re not going to come this way for a few fuckin’ doorbells.”

We ran back out to the main drag that connected a dozen sidestreets and started hooting and hollering on the side of the road. Keeley and Putnam fired up smokes and started shoving each other into the grass on the opposite side of the road. As we continued walking, the road widened and the sirens came closer and closer. We all glanced at each other, and for that moment, thought that we might get caught--a bunch of high schooolers playing grammar school games. Keeley grinned reassuringly, fifth guy looked dead-set on a mission, Putnam stared up at the stars, and Kroger looked terrified. We all had the same thoughts, but the crazy differences in reaction cracked me up for just a second. But then, another wail sounded, this one appreciably closer than the last. My brow furrowed quickly as I scanned the street for a good hiding place.

Kroger and I, being the biggest bitches out of the gang, took head-dives into some bush hoping to avoid getting caught. If the police were coming, we figured we’d be out of harm’s way. Eventually, everyone but Keeley was hiding, us under trees, Putnam and fifth guy standing a couple of feet behind us giggling nervously. If they came down this way, we'd be dead; Keeley'd give us all away.

We hid down there for awhile not paying attention to anything. We were scared shitless—so, of course, we didn’t hear the sirens fade into the distance. Once we heard some laughter, we both climbed out from underneath the tree, clothes dripping with water.

“Shit,” Keeley said sarcastically. “That was too close for comfort.”

“Why the fuck didn’t you hide?” Kroger yelled. Keeley took another drag off of his smoke.

“Dude, that car was at least five streets away,” Putnam said, smacking Keeley on the back, both of them hooting. “And even if it wasn’t, they weren’t coming this way, man. Look over there, I think they’re heading toward the highway. You idiots.”

The other three guys started laughing at us, and eventually we couldn’t help but join in too. My ears and cheeks were bright red from embarrassment, and my hair was soaked. I guess whatever we’d seen was a figment of our imaginations.

“Yeah,” I said sheepishly, rapidly shaking my head back and forth like a wet dog. “That’s my fault. Thought we were fucked. I thought the cops were coming right down this way.”

“Me too,” Kroger said, taking a few heavy panic-attack sighs.

“You need your inhaler?” the fifth guy asked, laughing and shaking Kroger by the shoulders.

“No. I’m cool,” Kroger wheezed. “I think I’m cool.” He coughed for a minute and jumped back into the street with the rest of us.

“We oughta get back,” Putnam whispered. “This fourth grade stuff's just too heavy. Let’s get some more of that orange flavored stuff.”

“Sounds good, buzz is fading,” Keeley said. “We still have a few bottles left.”

Bruce Lee, Motherfucker! (Part 2)

2010-03-21T22:06:00.001-07:00

We’d reached the party’s intermission, the few seconds to take some deep breaths, soundtracked by guys idolizing an alcoholic musician who beat Christy Brinkley after he married her (still inexplicable). The bizarre tone shift provided just a moment for introspection, where you reassess everything and realize how ludicrous it is that you’re sitting in front of a piano watching two kids play Billy Joel songs while your girlfriend’s comatose, some kid is asleep in the bathroom, and two kids you barely know are making out on a bed directly behind you. Like I said, you’ll never forget this kind of stuff.

I never experienced a moment quite like that at a party in college, where you really think about the future, about drinking, about your parents’ expectations, and if you turned the porch light on before you left. Once you get past those high school days, you inevitably move forward into the dream that is higher education. In college, you become desensitized to heavy drinking and random sex within about half of a semester, usually to the point where you just discuss it at the diner the next morning calmly, like you just ordered eggs over easy. It plays out like this:

“Man, O’Malley, you were so fucking wasted last night. I can’t believe that after you booted in that sorority’s bathroom sink, you still went to the bar and picked up that girl...er, thing. I’d hardly call her a girl, man.”

[Laughter.]

“Yeah, I know, what a joke. Man, we did way too much last night. Hey...wait, fuck you, that girl wasn’t that bad.”

“She was, bro.”

“Shut up. Shit, Rick just kept buying everyone shots of bourbon. I don’t even think that was Jack, it was probably that Banker’s Club bottom shelf shit. Disgusting. My head’s still pounding.”

[Idle laughter.]

“Nah, Rick was buying Jameson, his taste is too good. It was Diego who was buying that crap bourbon. Oh, by the way, you see who Carrie went home with last night? Yeah, I know, you’re not going to believe it. Yeah, that guy’s like still a virgin I think...”

Your weekends (and weeks), consumed by fraternity parties and bar crawls and such, are like some kind of Michael Bay movie. You start out with a big group, doing a power hour or playing ‘ruit, and then you hit up the first party. The kids who can’t drink end up dead after an hour or two, and as you move from the second party, to the third, and then to the first bar, and to the second bar, more and more kids ‘just gotta call it a night, bro.’ People drop from the group, other kids join up, and eventually, you’re in someone’s apartment at 3 AM with kids that you probably only partially recognize.

You order some disgusting, greasy food from that glorified gas station down the road, put on Amnesiac, spark up a bowl, and bullshit about politics and German art films and that chick with the big tits in your psychology class. At this point, you’re as awesome as Shia LaBoeuf or Nic Cage—the last action hero who survives an entire night of liver abuse to enjoy the best shreds of conversation the entire process probably had to offer. You look back on the night, survey the wreckage. Kids fast asleep around you, you walk home and live to see another day.

High school parties weren’t like that I don’t think, and you felt a lot closer to everyone as a result. It was always your group of friends all stuck under one roof or in some kid’s basement. At one point, when most people had the right buzz, someone would do something random. Kroger used to just start making up his own dance moves, and they were so ridiculous, everyone’d just stop and watch for a few minutes. Three or four girls would randomly get into a wrestling match, and kids would just put down their drinks and check it out. It was a time for reassessment, thinking about shit.

Stuff back then unfolded like a two act play—after the ninnies passed out in the early hours, everyone else was standing around that piano, gearing up for the second act, which would undeniably be better than the first...

For some reason, things at Brenton’s house went smoothly for the next twenty minutes. A total fucking lull. The kids who went too hard (and too early) were asleep, the guys who couldn’t keep their hands off their girlfriends were already in bed. Kroger was still jamming away on the piano, though Keeley was nowhere to be found. I went into the upstairs bathroom, peed for what felt like five minutes, and came back out to find a new crowd emerging. The newest phenomenon was being soundtracked by Kroger, as Erica and Keeley were making out on the floor in the middle of Brenton’s den. Brenton, Ray and the rest of us were just sitting there, looking at the spectacle like it was some kind of goddamn magic show.

Keeley and Erica were really going at it on the floor, feeling each others’ every nook and cranny. It was the kind of action that our parents would call “necking and heavy petting” and should only be done in the backseat of a Buick or in your parents’ bedroom when they’re in Costa Rica. Somewhere in the middle of the whole thing, Keeley kicked off his shoes, and Erica tried to take off his shirt.

“This is fucking disgraceful,” Ray said with a wild grin on his face. “But it’s really, really hilarious.”

It was like being at a professional wrestling match, with everyone making stupid asides to each other, wondering if the subjects would ever get privy to the crowd and find a room. If things woulda gone much further, we could’ve filmed a sequel to Boogie Nights in Brenton’s den. Laughing to the point of tears, I covered my mouth and walked in to see if my girlfriend was okay. Thankfully, she was sleeping soundly. I kissed her on the forehead, apologized for being a total prick, and went back to do a shot with a couple of kids from my trig class.

Things started to fade significantly in the next hour, and I was left to amuse myself. Next to your girlfriend going down for the count in the first round, it was the worst thing to happen at the party. No one wanted to chill. I was completely amped while everyone else was settling into ‘70s soft-core makeout sessions all around the house. Bored, I decided to start knocking on the locked bedroom doors.

“Yo dude, open the fucking door!”

“Fuck off, asshole!”

“Dude, Billy, come do a shot, man! It’s only like 2:00!”

“It’s 2:56. Go to bed!”

Then I came up to one bedroom and for no good reason, I just kicked the door in:

“BRUCE LEE, MOTHERFUCKER!” I yelled. It was an unfortunate choice of doors—I got hit in the face with someone’s dress shoe.

“What the hell man? Go to bed you idiot!” The fucking shoe flew out, knocked me in the chin, and I decided that there were other endeavors worth pursuing.

But things weren’t much better downstairs. Ray was barely awake, but pointed out to me that Kroger and some really cute girl were cuddled up on the couch getting after it. Ray pulled out his digital camera and started filming it; in his defense, they were saying some really dumb shit to each other, so it was totally worth having it on celluloid.

“Heyyy...what are you doing?” Kroger said.

“We’re taping you. None of us are ever going to be able to run for president because of tonight. Shit, we probably won’t even be able to get into college,” I bitched back.

Kroger and his lady friend started giggling, so Ray called it quits and went upstairs to find a bed or piece of unoccupied carpet or something to pass out on.

I followed him back up to try to wake people up for a second time, but everyone who’d been hooking up earlier was passed out cold, drooling all over themselves, singing Foghat in their sleep. People were strewn across the dining room, living room, and master bedroom, some guys passed out face down without sleeping bags or even sheets over them. Hammond was still living in the bathroom, I couldn’t find Brenton, Stace or Keeley, and Kroger was downstairs hanging out with that girl.

After mixing the aforementioned Kool Aid & Captain combo, I went back downstairs hoping to just curl up on the floor and pass out. But, it was not to be.

I’m not the kinda guy who usually tries to screw with my friends when they’re getting business done, but with Brenton, it was different. He’d probably cockblocked me at least twice, and this was major revenge. If I’d been sober as a judge, I would never have tried to do it, but I couldn’t resist the temptation. The Kool Aid/Captain blend gave me the burst of energy I needed to pay him back.

“BRUCE LEE, MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!” I shrieked as I kicked his bedroom door wide open.

There, in front of me was a nude art exhibit: Brenton right on top of Stace. Totally hilarious. I should’ve seen it coming, but for some reason, I never expected things to get quite that out of hand. She had a boyfriend, yet no one seemed to care. After this scare, I could feel the last drink of the night take effect—I was crashing hard and things got a little bit swirly. I curled up in a ball under a really warm blanket on the basement floor and drifted slowly to sleep. My last thought before I went to bed was strange: “Holy shit, I think that was Brenton’s first time.”

When I awoke, it was close to 6:30 AM and Keeley and Erica were making out next to me as though I didn’t exist. And it wasn’t like the basement was crowded—there were only a few of us outside of Brenton’s room. Couches and love seats were open for the taking. But, there they were squirming around and breathing heavy.

“Do you have a condom?” Erica asked Keeley.

I was tensing up now. I didn’t want to get up and piss on their parade, so I just rolled over and threw the blanket over my head. Sleep wasn’t coming quick enough, but things were about to get fucked up...again.

“No.”

“Okay...well, um, do you have something else?”

“What do you mean something else?”

“Well...”

I was dying, shaking with silent laughter, but the conversation was too good to get up and disrupt. There was no way I was ruining this moment. One of them was going to do something colossally stupid. No way to stop it now.

“Well, Brenton’s sister and her boyfriend are still up, I’ll see what they have.”

Minutes later, Keeley came barreling back down the stairs with a package of Saran wrap in his hand. “Here, this’ll work!” he exclaimed with what I imagine was a grin on his face. “My brother told me before that this stuff’ll do the job, no problem!”

For the rest of high school, neither of them lived that moment down.

I woke up the next day with my girlfriend somehow lying next to me. I got up for a second, went to the bathroom, and saw Brenton’s door wide open. Erica and Hammond, who was apparently fresh-up from his night with the porcelain Goddess in the can, had changed sleeping venues and were now curled up in bed with Brenton and Stace. Somehow, in the three or four hours I was asleep, two people on opposite sides of the house ended up in bed with two other people. Things probably happened early in the morning, but I never bothered asking. At this point, nothing would’ve surprised me in the slightest.

When I got up for good, I was ready to go as soon as possible—I needed to be somewhere else and quick. In a house full of one-night stands, empty bottles, and hungover girls, the only thing to do is bolt, get a bacon, egg and cheese, and go back to your basement couch. I got up later than everyone, my girlfriend got a ride with Tina and the hair-holding girl, and Ray, Brenton and I cleaned up the mess of bottles and cups. I was ready for the ten mile road back to reality. Car keys in hand, I walked at a quick clip toward the door. Keeley stopped me.

“Yo, dude, can you give me a lift back?” he inquired.

“Uh, sure man.” Didn’t know the kid, but whatever.

“Cool, thanks. Yo, I gotta get some shit downstairs.”

“Yeah, me too, man.”

“Yeah, my bag’s there too,” Ray chimed in.

We went downstairs to find Erica asleep...no longer in Brenton’s bed, but in her original position on the floor.

“How did she get here?”

“You got me. I woke up two hours ago and she wasn’t next to me.”

“Look, her one boob’s just flappin’ out in the wind here. Who even knows what happened last night,” Ray laughed.

“Yeah, I woke up twice this morning, and each time she was in a different place,” I said. We guessed that she must have teleported her way from carpet to bed to carpet again.

“What should I do?” Keeley asked.

“What the fuck do you mean, ‘what should you do’?” Ray said indignantly. “Leave a tip or something?”

“A buck? Joking. Well, uh, well let’s just go, that might give her the wrong impression,” he mumbled.

***

If there was such a thing as a “drive of shame,” this certainly would have qualified. But on the bright side, the police never made it to our party.

I did my share of early-Sunday-morning walks across campus back at school, and some even longer walks when I was with a girl who lived ten blocks away from my place. College presents no opportunities for male walks of shame; they’re more like walks of triumph. You hobble out of a girl’s place after a Thursday night sorority cocktail, realize you’ve already missed one class, your red striped Brooks Brothers tie hanging around your neck underneath your crumpled-up navy blazer. It’s a little embarrassing, but shit, everyone knows what happened last night, and you just smile at the professors and administrators who walk by.

But, this drive of shame was ridiculous because you knew the second you pulled in the driveway you’d need an excuse for however wretched you looked, smelled, and acted. By that morning, after spending a night on low-pile carpet, I looked like absolute hell. My hair was shooting out in at least 90 directions, I reeked of three different kinds of alcohol, and I was nursing a moderate headache. I felt pretty much fine, but I must’ve looked like ten miles of bad road. Now I know how cheating husbands feel when they roll into the driveway to greet the wife and kids with clothes wrinkled from lying on the floor of their secretary’s walk-up and smelling of unfamiliar perfume.

“How was it?” my dad asked as I bounded through the front door.

“Uhhh...great, lot of fun, pretty cool, you know, the usual.”

“Well, good.”

No one commented on the fact that I looked like I’d been out in the wilderness howling with the wolves all night. (In college, I showed up to most of my 9 AM classes looking like this.)

Later, I told my parents about most of the things that happened. They were cool about it. Mission accomplished, no jail time. Move forward. And that’s all you can do.

Going to class for six hours a day, five days a week made all of those high school parties something to really treasure, and even if things got out of control, I always walked out the morning after with a dozen good stories. The jokes that came out of that night and countless other weekends over the coming months made leaving high school difficult. Make fun if you want, but these memories are irreplaceable—everyone still gets shit for the time they made complete asses of themselves at a party like five and a half years ago.

College isn’t like that; not always. Too much free time gives you all kinds of excuses for drinking: parties (at a frat house, with the artsy kids, in the stoners’ pad, etc.), cocktails, bar hopping on a Wednesday, and whatever else. The constant stream of parties and bar crawls deafens the senses like sitting through the two-and-a-half hour running time of Transformers 2. Just like I couldn’t wait to get out of that movie, by graduation, I couldn’t wait to pack up the car and get the hell home.

When you leave for freshman year of college, you ump into it with stars in your eyes: the endless keg parties, the college women, the easy availability of whatever substances you care to experiment with. All this shit sounds epic. But it never lives up to whatever stupid expectations you have at 17 years old. And even when you think the college myths are gonna be the things you treasure forever, they’re not.

When I talked to a few of my good buddies from college on alumni weekend (about five months ago), we all remembered some of the shit we did over the past couple of years. The things we brought up were far removed from the crap perpetuated by the O.A.R.-listening, Abercrombie-wearing, necklace-slinging high school senior. None of us mentioned “that one sick rager at SAE” or “that amazing sorority cocktail where I did a keg stand for like 39 seconds.” These things were meaningless. Instead, we talked about some time we played pool on a Tuesday, drank a lot of pitchers and ended up at the diner until 6 AM. We remembered the power hours where we crammed 20 people into one bedroom and sang Hall & Oates songs (and only felt a little embarrassed). It seemed weak at the time, but the stuff we did before or after a party, or where we went on a Wednesday when there was “nothing better” going on—this shit was important.

I graduated, and it was great to come full-circle. After the car’s packed full of both useful and useless stuff on the Sunday of commencement, you give your best buddies a hug and swear you’ll keep in touch or see them soon. You wave a final goodbye to the guys you’ve lived with for the past year. You throw on your sunglasses and punch the gas, pulling away from the curb at twice the speed limit, windows all the way down, Marshall Tucker on the stereo. And, at that moment, all you want to do is go back to that time when you first snaked a couple of beers from your old man’s stash on a summer night, watched a baseball game, and said to yourself, “Man, could it really get any better than this?” I’m not sure. Back then, you still had to hide the cans under the coffee table so your parents wouldn’t kick your ass.

Bruce Lee, Motherfucker! (Part 1)

2010-03-05T13:51:00.000-08:00

"The Nature of parties has been imperfectly studied. It is, however, generally understood that a party has a pathology, that it is a kind of an individual and that it is likely to be a very perverse individual. And it is also generally understood that a party hardly ever goes the way it is planned or intended. This last, of course, excludes those dismal slave parties, whipped and controlled and dominated...These are not parties at all but acts and demonstrations, about as spontaneous as peristalsis..." –John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

I think I was the only one still up and not having sex by this point, and that made me mad. It was cresting 4 AM, my girlfriend was passed out on a love seat after a night of too much Vlad, and I was going stir-crazy. It wasn’t that I hadn’t been drinking, but that I’d gotten to the point where I was too amped up from dancing around and yelling at people that I couldn’t sit down and take a nap. So I made another cocktail, a little Captain and Kool Aid (I suggest you never drink this...never ever...) and waltzed up and down the stairs a few times attempting to work out my excitement. I tried to wake people up, but when I’d kick them in the ribs, they’d just start bitching and moaning about how drunk or tired they were. The most common response: “Fuck off, man. I’m trying to sleep.”

On my final dive down the stairs, I decided to go wake up some good friends. My best buddy Brenton’s bedroom was in the basement, and I heard sounds coming out of there. Needless to say, I put my ear up to that bad boy and had a quick listen.

“Yeah, I’m on the pill. It’s okay.”

“Alright.”

“Uhhh...oh...oh, uhhh...” a girl moaned.

“Good shit,” I whispered to myself, an ear-to-ear grin spreading across my face. After drinking for probably close to six hours, liquid courage got the better of me. I decided that I was going to bust down the fucking door and show those kids who was boss. For the second (or third?) time that night, I felt beyond invincible.

“BRUCE LEE, MOTHERFUCKER!!!” I screamed as I high-kicked Brenton’s door wide open. I didn’t know who he was with, so I figured I’d just mess with him for a minute before he had to get up and throw me out of the room using physical force.

“Dude, what the hell? Get the fuck out of here!” he yelled at me, bare-assed, mounting some girl. She was remarkably silent for the moment—and then I saw her face.

“Oh, Christ. Brenton, what are you doing?” It was not the person I expected—I should’ve seen it coming based on the events of the night, but the two of them boning knocked me back a step. He got up and slammed the door in my face which came inches from breaking my nose. Then I cracked up. The next morning was going to be the worst (or the funniest) of many people’s lives.

***

Everyone remembers their first beer, although my first brew was actually four glasses of wine with my parents in a ritzy fusion joint somewhere in California. The waiter just came over with my parents’ wine, poured them two glasses and then proceeded to fill mine. Before I could say “I’m only 15!” my dad slapped my hand and grinned at the sommelier. A few drinks later, after digesting the best Carpaccio (among other things) I ever had, I was feeling toasty warm and blathering about early American history to my parents as my dad, in a rented Volvo, tried to navigate through an unfamiliar city.

Of course everyone remembers the first time they got drunk. My first time was the summer after my sophomore year in high school, so I guess you could consider me a bit of a slow starter. I went over to my buddy’s place after work one day and we just started bombing shots.

“Well, here you go, bro. It’s all hard, so I’ll fill you up a shot,” a scruffy guy two or three years my senior yelled a few seconds after I came through the door.

At the time, I was pretty worried, even though I’d had my share of beers before, all stolen out of my downstairs refrigerator in the storage room. The only time I’d really seen hard-A was in my dad’s scotch glass at a restaurant. Your first shot of vodka is something completely different from your first Rolling Rock. I figured that this moment was going to lead me to a life of alcohol dependency (okay, fine, that’s ridiculous, but they brainwash you in high school) or worse, to a naked lap outside or a trip to the emergency room to get my stomach pumped. My hand trembling, I held it up to my lips, and drank down half of it, feeling the burn in my throat, esophagus and stomach as it swam through my digestive tract. I waited a couple of seconds and finished the rest, grinning.

“Come on, man. You’re better than that. Here you go,” the kid laughed as he put another shot in my hand. I took this one down quickly, feeling a doubly worse fire surge through my body.

“Whoooo!” I yelled, slamming the small glass down on the counter like Stiffler would’ve in one of those American Pie movies.

“This your first time?” one of the other kids I worked with asked.

“Yeah, for this kinda shit, yeah, it is. Can I just get a beer?”

Two of the older guys there started cracking up, and a couple of girls made sideways glances at me like I just asked for a Diet Coke. “Well, fuck it, I can do another one of those,” I said. We all filled shot glasses up and toasted to a great summer. That event seems ironic, because if, in college (or after) I’d ever asked for another shot of Raspberry Smirnoff instead of another beer, I would’ve gotten booted out of my own house.

We didn’t get out-of-our-mind drunk that night, but I tried to do my share, mixing up some of the most god-awful cocktails I ever made. I do not recommend my 11th grade special though—raspberry and green apple vodkas mixed with orange soda. It was like a diabetic’s worst nightmare.

And if you remember your first time getting drunk, you’ll also be able to look back fondly on the first time you got drunk with all of your best friends and the whole thing went completely to hell. For some people, their first time getting sloshed was like this. Mine wasn’t—by comparison, my first night of drinking was laid back. Everything was mellow, no one acted dumb. I think I might have even slept in a bed that night.

The true, batshit-crazy party moment for most people consists of:
1. About four kids puking (bonus points if someone has to get rushed to the ER)
2. Someone passing out in the bathroom (bonus points if two or three people pass out in different bathrooms; even more bonus points if two people pass out together in the same bathroom)
3. Two or three of your friends losing their virginities (bonus points if it’s with the person passed out in the bathroom)
4. Shit getting broken (by accident or on purpose, bonus points for irreplaceable antiques or works of art)
5. Someone getting naked in front of everyone (bonus points if it’s outside, during the winter)
6. A 4 AM house call from the cops to tell you that Ms. Estelle Waters from next door hasn’t been able to get to bed even after taking 7 Ambien CRs (bonus points if the cops come in and have a drink, or if you go to Estelle’s house and bring her sleeping pills to your party).

Regardless, our disaster night was after some semi-formal dance during my junior year of high school. Brenton and I had been planning this thing for a couple of weeks. Parents out of town. Sister said she’d buy us a lot of liquor. Lots of reasonably attractive girls who could do maybe two shots. In theory, it sounded like heaven.

My girlfriend and I left the dance early to get over to Brenton’s house for the festivities. After making out in the car for about forty minutes until Brenton’s sister came out to yell at us for leaving the headlights shining through a neighbor’s window, we walked inside and started making drinks. The kitchen looked like a palace (i.e. a liquor store)—bottles of Vlad, Banker’s Club Gin, Captain Morgan, magnums of pinot grigio, and bottles of Tortilla Gold tequila were strewn all over the place. For a party with maybe 15 or 20 high school juniors, half of them girls, it was enough to put most of the people there in something resembling a coma.

Since my girlfrined got drunk like four times in her life, she obviously thought she could handle half a Solo cup full of Vlad mixed with red Gatorade, no ice. I grimaced at her cocktail choice and decided to stick with a standby, a Captain and Coke. More people were arriving, so I started chatting with everyone, meeting people’s girlfriends, challenging people to drinking contests, etc. Before I could look again, my girlfriend was back at the punch bowl pouring another vomit-before-midnight special. Ray, a guy I’d call a temperate friend, started giving me shit almost immediately.

“Your girlfriend’s gonna be really drunk man, you need to do something,” he said to me in the kindest, least condescending way possible.

“Ehhh, I doubt it, man. I think she got drunk in like ninth grade for the first time. She probably has a good tolerance,” I said tongue-in-cheek.

“Really? Oh, wow, I didn’t know that,” he said, seemingly taking this statement seriously.

“Yeah, well, I just found out. When I told her to take it a little easier, she just barked that back at me. I mean, we’ll see, I think it’ll be cool.” I assumed she’d be bombed in about 45 minutes.

“Dude, she’s still wearing her dress from the dance, but has her jeans on under it. Are you sure?” he laughed. “But, in her defense, she’s a good dancer.”

Scratch that—she’ll be shot before 11:00.

“Goddamn it.”

My expert prediction about shit being “cool” at first was as correct as the one about that Y2K scare bringing the world to a cataclysmic end. The next thing I know, it’s only 11:20 and I’m getting screamed at by three girls who, at that time, were complete strangers. I was just having a nice conversation with a couple of friends, when all of a sudden...

“Get your ass in here,” Tina screamed. “Your girlfriend is sick and all you can do is sit around and talk to your friends. No, it’s okay, just go make another drink.” Though Tina is now a good friend of mine, I thought she was mighty intimidating right then. Imagine meeting someone for the second time only to realize she’s an Ethel Merman-sound-a-like with a bone to pick.

“I’m only on my first...no wait, second...” I wasn’t taking anything she said seriously, and commenced giggling with a couple of the kids around me to piss her off. Whatever, I figured. She’ll probably just give up and leave me alone. How bad could things really be?

“This is your girlfriend, get in here and take care of her. This isn’t funny. Something really bad could happen. You know, people die from this!” She was being wildly overdramatic, I thought. If everyone remembers their first beer and their first drunk, then they remember the first time they did too many shots and spent a night chained to the toilet. And they also remember that they got through it fine, albeit with a blinding headache the next day.

After being verbally assaulted for a couple of minutes, I sauntered down the hall and opened the door to Brenton’s sister’s room only to find her already sloshed over a bucket generally used for mopping floors. One of Tina’s insanely annoying friends was holding her hair back and giving me dirty looks. I took a step back—things were a lot worse than I’d initially thought. Maybe Ethel Merman had a point.

“Didn’t you pay attention to what she was drinking?” bitched hair-holding girl.

“What, are you kidding? What am I here, the fuckin’ babysitter? Shit, I’ve only ever drank a couple times...” I was searching for the right thing to say, my mind feeling fractured. The alcohol was making me giddy and weird, but there were blips of rationality pulling through to keep me in place, seeming to tell me, “You need to take care of this situation. It’s the right thing to do.”

So I tried to take care of things, but I ended up looking like a full-on ass nugget. My girlfriend started apologizing profusely to me, having stopped the scene she was putting on when I barged into the room. She was sort of listing to and fro like a sailboat in high tide, and probably enduring the spins that eventually get so bad the room doesn’t go ‘round in circles, but upward and downward making you feel like you stared at a slot machine for a few too many hours.

“Jesus, are you alright?” I stammered. I’d never seen anyone go half-catatonic on two Vlad and Gatorades. Maybe Tina was right—maybe we were gonna have to make an ER run tonight, though God knows who would’ve take the wheel for that ride.

The rational part of my brain wasn’t speaking so loudly anymore, and for every second I stood there, I was thinking “Shit, this sucks ass, man, having to take care of drunk people only an hour into the night. If this was a dude, we’d just let him puke in peace and check on him once in awhile to make sure he didn’t fall over and get a concussion. But, noooo, we’ve gotta stand watch here with four people.” As I turned to leave, rationality made a comeback.

“I’m here for you,” I said, sounding only moderately convincing.

Then, Captain Morgan reared his head. Even though I was only mildly buzzed, I heard the 20 or so people outside, having fun, some dude playing an atrocious rendition of a Beethoven symphony on the piano, guys passing around a bottle Pinot Grigio like a canteen. “Just get out now, things will be fine,” my drunk thoughts spoke. “DO ANOTHER SHOT! IT’S A PARTY!”

She fell asleep about two seconds after I said that, but Tina and the girl holding her hair back had me in a hostage situation, not saying anything. They were watching my every move with mean little eyes. One of the girls was on the other side of my girlfriend, Tina was by the door, and someone else pranced in to give me the hairy eyeball. Going to have an outburst in 3...2...1...

“What?!” I yelled. “It’s not like I had this in mind, man.” I slurped the last couple of sips out of my Solo.

“Whatever,” Tina said, rolling her eyes and stomping out. As soon as she left guard duty, I got the fuck out of that room to rejoin the party. About an hour had passed and I felt like I probably had a lot of catching up to do. I joined Brenton and Ray for a shot of tequila in the kitchen.

My ex-girlfriend Stace (we were still good friends, somehow) was at the party too, and had shown up there with Brenton after her boyfriend refused to take her to this dance. Stace and I were still pretty close, so she was confiding in me about her not-so-secret crush on Brenton and whining about her boyfriend.

“I mean, Brenton’s like so sweet. Todd’s just such a...you know, he just doesn’t treat me like his girlfriend. Like he thought he could just say, ‘No Stace, I won’t take you to the dance,’ since he’s hanging out, playing cards,” she said, slugging a vodka-tonic and encouraging me to pour another drink. “But, like, I fucking called Todd’s bluff and went with Brenton. He’s just like the nicest guy.”*

“Yes, Stace, Brenton and I have been best friends since 7th grade. He’s good people. But, you sure this is gonna be a good idea? We’re all drinking and—well, you know.”

“I know, I know, it might not be the best idea. Nothing’s going to happen though, you know that,” she said smiling playfully at me, putting her head on my shoulder. “Brenton’s just the nicest guy.”

“Yeah, I mean...”

“He’s sooo cute, too!”

Glenn Beck repeats fewer talking points than Stace when she’s got Smirnoff coursing through her veins, but she’s cool. Fun to drink with, not a total pain in the ass, and not throwing up in a trashcan, bucket, or toilet.

But something quickly broke up this semblance of a conversation. As I opened my mouth to make a snide comment to Stace, somebody, completely red in the face, raced up and started giggling like a schoolgirl. Here we were, not even two hours into this soiree, and this kid’s screaming: “Dude, Hammond’s passed out in the fucking bathroom wasted. You gotta check this out! He’s totally shot!”

I checked it out and started giggling too. I was more sober than anyone in the joint save the two guys who weren’t drinking; but Hammond was indeed napping in the bathroom, headphones on (guesses on the music choice?), spooning with the crapper. His glasses were half falling into the toilet. It was a sight to behold, especially because he hadn’t thrown up, but just chose the bathroom as the most suitable place to catch a few quiet hours of sleep.

Stace came in and started grabbing my ass for absolutely no reason.

“This is horrible. Your girlfriend and some other girl are already passed out, too.”

“I’m aware of this. I think they went a little too hard right in the beginning. Vlad and Gatorade almost never leads to a long night.”

“Well...I mean...”

“Look, he’s just hanging out there. Not doing anything. I think he’ll be fine. Gotta go, Stace.”

After I ran to the kitchen to stir up another bev, I came back into the master bedroom for what appeared to be a dance party, a frequent occurrence at every gathering we had for the next year and a half. Hammond was passed out in the bathroom a few feet from the bedroom, but kids were dancing around to Duran Duran, and Bon Jovi, not giving a shit that some guests were already down for the count. Woah....oh, livin’ on a prayer! chants filled the room. No one was really dancing, but just jumping and spinning around, grinding on whatever girl or guy got closest to them. It was a pre-school party that’d gone awry because someone put Benzedrine in the fruit punch.

After a half hour of this, Stace started grabbing my ass again and pulling me toward the king-sized bed. When I looked around, everyone had pretty much filtered out, leaving “Jessie’s Girl” blasting through a laptop. How the hell did I miss the disappearance of, uhm, everyone? I thought to myself. And now...Before I even completed the thought, Stace was kissing me. I knew from the get-go this was a bad idea, but I just went with it. I guess since we dated at one point, it didn’t feel like that big of a deal. It was. What a supremely dumb move, I thought to myself a few days later as I tried to explain myself. But that rational part of my mind, which served me reasonably well an hour or so earlier, had now all but flicked off. The warmth of the alcohol took hold.

Jessie is a friend, yeah I know he’s been a good friend of mine...

As we were getting after it, feeding each other typical ‘you’re such a good kisser’ lines, clarity all of a sudden flashed through my body: “Wait, fuck, what the hell are we doing? This is dumb, really dumb.”

“I know, but it’s just like, whatever, she’s not your type.”

You know I wish that I had Jessie’s Girl [...killer synth riff...]

“Oh Jesus. Okay, one that’s not true, and two, we need to get out of here. And, fuck, three, you have a boyfriend. And a date tonight. And, uh, fiv...I mean four, they’re both good friends of mine. Holy shit, let’s just go do a shot.”

Where can I find a woman like that?

I got up from the bed figuring we could sneak out of the room only to run into the holding-back-the-hair girl right inside the doorway, voyeuring in on our sesh.

I play along with the charade...

“What are you doing?” she inquired, flicking her hair near my face.

“None of your business!”

“I just saw you—“

“No, you’re mistaken. We were just listening to Rick Springfield.” I bolted out of the room, mixed up another drink in the kitchen, and heard people playing piano.

This kid I sort of knew, Keeley, had started playing some Billy Joel tune, probably “Piano Man” or “New York State of Mind.” Kroger joined him on the bench, and “the girl everyone hooked up with,” Erica (everyone) had started hitting on both of them. She was sitting in between them on the piano bench, trying to make out with Kroger, and then started licking Keeley’s ear when Kroger just ignored her. The mini-concerto kept up like that for a bit longer as they tried not to notice her. If time allowed, and they didn’t know “Free Bird” (whenever someone plays music at a party, there’ll always be one guy who yells this out) I was going to make this request from side two of Piano Man:

In the morning there’ll be hell to pay/Somewhere along the line.**

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

*I showed Todd, a buddy of mine and Kroger, this thing and he wasn’t a huge fan. For most of the humor, you had to be there. His only response: “Well, that’s a time in my life I’d rather not have to live through again.” Incidentally, he and Stace got back together, broke up, and ‘got back together’ a few other times in the next year or two.

**”Somewhere Along the Line” is easily the best cut on Piano Man, rivaled only by “Traveling Prayer” and “The Ballad of Billy the Kid” (and perhaps “Stop in Nevada”). Also, if you know any kid who “sort-of” plays piano, chances are the only tunes they know by Billy Joel are “Piano Man” and “New York State of Mind” and maybe...just maybe, “Only the Good Die Young.”

Travels with Henry (Part 2)

2010-02-26T23:01:00.000-08:00

“Dude, Henry, are you cool man?” I asked him.

“Tanggggled up in bluuuueee...she was-a-married when we first met, soon to be divorrrrrced,” he sang back to me. Then, standing up straight, “Yeah, it’s all good.” He was giggling like a son-of-a-bitch now, laughing at everything Rachel was saying, trying hopelessly to share some random anecdotes with the teetotalers we just bumped into.

After grabbing some food, we found ourselves in a series of bars, pubs and dives. The entire sequence of events between 9:00 and midnight was a blur. We must’ve run into our friends who lived downtown, because I suddenly noticed we were rolling about 11 deep. We started chanting “Sweet Caroline” on the way to a pub, throwing in the “dun-dun-duns” and the “so good, so good, so good” interludes. A few of the kids (who started a little bit...scratch that...way wayyyyy too early), stumbling around like a pack of three-legged dogs looking for sympathetic owners, called it quits around then and took a later bus back. For most of us though, the night was still young. My cell phone read 11:58 PM as we exited a very cool bar that I promised myself I’d remember how to get back to.

Obviously I got lost going down that way the next week.

We were eventually heading through Temple Bar, which if you’ve spent more than four days in Dublin-town, you’ll know is filled with tourists, English and American usually, trying to get a grip on reality through a very intense chemically-induced haze. What’s more, around St. Patrick’s Day, the scene down there is like that kicked up two dozen notches, with everyone wearing funny hats, scarves, and shirts proclaiming “I’m Irish and I like to fuck” or something along those lines. On this particular Saturday, there were 16-year old girls swigging green beer, people with heavy English accents trying to ask you directions through a slew of mispronounced verbs and nouns, and Americans screaming “Born in the U.S.A.” It was a lot like that Mardi Gras scene from Easy Rider where Captain America and Billy drop acid and start to see all kinds of crazy shit happening with the floats and people wearing wacked-out costumes on Bourbon Street. Overwhelming. Of course, we all realized that we were more sober than half of the people out that night.

“Henry, I think these fuckers are more tanked than we are,” I belched, killing the back half of a pint someone handed me as we waded through the crowds.

“Yeahhhhh, tanked motherfuckers. Let’s go! Porterhouse! Gin and tonics! It’s what the cool kids are doing!” he replied, half of the time trying to join the bizarre crowd that engulfed us.

“Good call, but it’s gonna take us a year to get through this mess of people.”

Rachel chimed in: “You guys need to stop being such bitches. Let’s go, right now. I can get us there.” Thankfully, this girl could drink and she could navigate. Within eight minutes, we were sitting at one of the four bars in the Porterhouse, pint glasses in hand, waiting for the booze to really take hold.

By 12:45, Henry’d switched back to gin and was telling me about his reasons for only drinking hard alcohol.

“No, I’m only drinking gin from now on, or whiskey, because beer makes you fat. You get it, baby? And [grabbing the limited rolls on his stomach] I need to lose weight. You get it?”

“That’s bullshit, Henry. Look, that tonic water’s got a ton of sugar in it. Look at the back of your little bottle of tonic. Fuck, well, they don’t have calories on there. But you just paid like two euros for that little thing. Anyway, gin has calories, too. You know I heard a pint of Guinness only has like 150 calories.”

“Yeah, well this has like 70 calories. Read it and...oh, damn, they don’t have the calorie count on here. Shit.”

“If you’d just listen to me...”

“No! Wait, yes! Look...see...I’ll tell you about Bombay Sapphire...”

Whatever. No use arguing with a fanatic. I jumped back into the conversation with Joe that’d became heated and somehow gotten back to On the Road. My beatnik friends were screaming at each other, loudly debating the merits of Kerouac’s two most famous sagas.

“No, you don’t get it, man. On the Road isn’t Kerouac’s master-work. The Dharma Bums is—I mean that’s the ultimate thing, like at the end, when he goes up on that mountain for 40 days alone. It’s a test of his will, you know?” Mikey was yelling this, attracting a crowd of several Americans who wanted to argue the point harder than he did.

“Shit, Mikey, that’s bullshit man!” some guy yelled.

“Fuck you!”

“Don’t give me that,” Joe screamed back. “On the Road is a staple of pop culture, I mean those parts in Denver were just mind-blowing...”

And on and on. Joe and Mikey were practically leading a class discussion on Beat Generation lit, and I wasn’t in the mood to dig too deeply into that scene. That’s a conversation better left for dorm room lava-lamp watching with Dark Side of Oz in the background. In the middle of a bar on St. Patty’s Day, forget that crap.

Since Henry was everyone’s favorite kid, he was buying every girl in the place drinks. Rachel and one of her friends were kissing up on both of his cheeks after every beer or shot he bought them, and he just kept throwing shit on his American Express card like prohibition was making its way across the Atlantic. It was approaching 2 AM, and the drunken Yanks around us were asking for “Voka/Re-boos” instead of “Vodka Red Bulls.” Finally, Henry pulled out his card to pick up a few more beers, put it down, and turned away for a second to speak to someone about a class project he was working on.

“Look, this lady’s gonna give us a fucking A on this thing, man. Me and Tom got the whole system figured out. We’re arguing that the Iraq War was completely just. Let me tell you about this article...”

But, in the midst of his stupor, one of Rachel’s roommates proceeded to take off with his card (I think she asked first?) and started ordering. Beers, shots, mixers, whatever; Henry’s old man was gonna pick up the tab for everyone. His dad was probably just waking up to a nice Sunday breakfast only to find, as he approached his computer, that his son just put $200 worth of booze on his account, and he’d be regretting ever telling his son that the card was “for emergencies only.”

It was at this point that she flicked his credit card right into the trashcan and the night needed to end. The bar was overflowing with sweaty, rainsoaked twenty-somethings shoving up against us on every side. Henry, when he saw the card incident, clearly went a little crazy talking to Liz. Even though I tried to calm him down, he went forth with his mission to reclaim his Platinum Amex. She didn’t know what to say to this exchange:

“Seriously, Liz, that was my dad’s credit card.” She tried to interject, but he just kept rolling, saying over and over, “You threw it in the trash, look, look in there, I know it’s in the goddamn trashcan. What the fuck? NO, SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE HELL??!?”

Liz was beyond befuddled. When the nicest kid on the program comes up to you, reeking of juniper berries, demanding you dig into a trashcan to find his card, you take a couple of steps back. Then, you realize there are some things you can’t take seriously.

“Henry, it’s fine. You should probably go home,” Liz said, not taking here eyes off the jacked bartender pouring everyone shots.

He came back my way, avoiding her, hoping to God he’d find that card before he’d have to call his dad in the middle of the night asking him to cancel it for the third time in two months.

I could only imagine that exchange.

The first two times were no big deal: “Sorry dad, I got pick-pocketed in Prague. I couldn’t do anything.” “Sorry dad, I left it at a bar. Nothing happened though, it was a Tuesday night, I’m sure no one paid for anything on it. Yeah, okay, so we spent like $30 on beers. The exchange rate is rough.”

This one wouldn’t work out so well: “Sorry dad, after I bought like six rounds of drinks, some girl just snaked it and started ordering a bunch of shit on it. Oh, by the way, can you put another two grand in my account? We’re leaving for Berlin tomorrow. You know my address here, right?”

After I gave him a stern-talking-to, Henry finally coaxed one of the nicer bartenders to dig his credit card out of the shitbag. As he held it between his thumb and pointer, the thing dripping with God-knows-what, we knew it was time to go and get some pizza. We ran across the street, each of us devoured a large, and we took cabs back to our apartments.

“Thank Christ I got that thing back,” Henry muttered, almost falling asleep in the back of the taxi. “My dad might’ve made me fly home after that one.”

“Shut the fuck up, Henry,” Rachel and Liz babbled in unison. I woke all of them up once we made it back to our apartments and paid the fare myself. We stumbled into our respective buildings not saying more than “Uh, seeya later and shit.”

***

I felt a heavy kick on my mattress at about 1 PM the next afternoon. Henry and I got out of bed, both fully clothed from the night before with “Tell the Truth” blaring out of my laptop. I fumbled through my pockets, thankfully found my wallet and phone, and looked through crumpled up receipts from the food-and-bar tab from the night before that was hellishly large to say the least. Henry’s tab was more than twice what mine was. I heard mumblings of “shit” and “fuck” as we banged out the door to grab some Gatorades and Pringles.

We weaved our way through minimal crowds to the convenience store just off campus. And then we weaved our way through the aisles at TESCO, wandering through the beer aisle (yeah, we grabbed a six pack of Carlsberg), then the bread aisle, then slammed into a few shelves of diapers before we got our bearings. When we finally got the necessities, Henry pulled out the Amex and slurred, “Don’t worry, I got you bud.”

“Thanks boss.”

“Forget it. God, that was a long fucking night.”

“It’s good you found that nice bartender to dig through the trash to get that back to you, boss.”

“What do you mean?”

“Uhhh...dude, you told Liz that because she stole your dad’s card she had to fish it out of the trashcan. You seemed adamant about that. You thought your dad would have to cancel it again.”

“What? Oh hell, did I call him?”

“No, no! You almost lost the card, though, don’t you remember when it got pitched into the trash?”

“Well, yeah, but fuck...”

“Liz, she took it from you, bought a ludicrous last-call round of drinks.”

“What? Oh, Christ, yeah. Liz, some people’ve got no respect, you hear me? No respect!”

“You don’t even...”

“Yeah, you’re right, the whole goddamn thing’s a...total fuckshit. Did I ever tell you about this hangover cure? Two cans of Pringles and three Gatorades. I’ll be functioning better than ever in no time.” He pulled a receipt out of his pocket. “Oh God. I hope my dad lets this one go!”

We went back to our rooms and laid around watching Freaks and Geeks for a few hours. My stomach felt like I’d just ingested a Super Size Me amount of McDonalds, and I wasn’t looking to leave the couch until about 8:30 that night. Henry went back to bed somewhere in the middle of the afternoon and I didn’t see him until 11:00 the next morning. He was still feeling the effects of his Humphrey Bogart-inspired night when we got to the airport that day for a flight to other parts of Europe.

Right now, I’m still feeling the effects of that night. Face it—studying abroad is an intense vacation schools pawn off on a lot of people as a tremendous learning experience that apparently makes you a more intelligent, interesting, and marketable student. But really, it’s this simple: if you have the means to leave college for a few months, you do it. Don’t get me wrong. My time in Ireland was unquestionably one of the finest four-month stints of my life. I traveled all over Europe, I tried great food, drank amazing wine, met some of my best friends, and went to class only half as much as I would’ve had to if I’d stayed in the U.S. And after doing enough time at a liberal arts college, confined to a ten block radius, I think I needed that vacation. Call me spoiled, but it's the truth.

Of course, I have friends who swear to the Holy Father that their abroad experiences meant “so much to them” and were a “total learning experience” and “gave them so much insight into other cultures.” The jury’s still out. One of my best friends learned to speak another language almost fluently which is unbelievably cool and completely useful. I guess for some people, it can be pretty transformative, especially if you spend 10 or 11 months amid a completely unfamiliar people. “Life changing”? Maybe. Going to the post office is life-changing if you meet your future wife there buying stamps. “Broadening your horizons”? I’m still dubious when people spew that tripe.

I guess for a small minority, the travel abroad experience brings an expanded worldview, but for most of us, it’s just Freedom that we’re after. All of my friends, at one point or another, were reading Kerouac during the trip, and as Joe, Mikey, Henry and I sat drinking a couple bottles of wine the way Ray Smith from Dharma Bums would’ve, we discussed the whole thing. We agreed that, at that specific moment in time, every day was liberating and exciting, never knowing what you’d end up doing from one week to the next.

Freedom comes with a hefty price tag and thankfully our parents were willing to foot the bill.

It’s clear that we didn’t understand a fucking thing. The whole Kerouac-inspired phenomenon lasted a few short months, but we were really more like Albert Brooks and his yuppie wife in Lost in America. In that pic, Brooks and Julie Haggerty (his spouse) kept babbling about Easy Rider and freedom. As yuppies, they looked at Easy Rider as a guiding light, but they had a “nest-egg” (i.e. $190,000) to live off of. Obviously it was the same with us. None of us were like Sal Paradise. We’d nothing to do with the legacy of Captain America. We never panhandled and we sure as hell never sold coke to Phil Spector to fund a two week getaway. In all, we were only luckier than Brooks and Haggerty because no one ever gambled away our cash in Vegas. We just got to feed off of our parents’ nest-eggs the whole time.

I stayed in touch with Henry. He’s still more grounded than I am, so when we’re chatting, our conversation always turns back to the nights in Dublin where we talked constantly about some idea of freedom and tried to live it. He got serious with a girl in Dublin soon after That Night, though. And then he snagged a job after graduation and started seeing another lady. So, all we’ve got now are simply memories of being unencumbered and stupidly happy. It’s all pretty much a dying part of his life. But for me, it’s something I’m hanging on to and still blathering about. I sit looking at my journal from the spring of ’08 realizing I can’t get the goddamn trip out of my head. Memories of street corners, shitty food, pubs, running to catch a bus, and babbling about philosophy still pique my senses. Nest-egg or not, I’m stuck in the past.

I lived the next year and a half of my life after Dublin in that same faux-Freedom haze, just hanging out with friends, moving from party to party to bar to party, knowing the college grading system well, and doing just enough to keep my GPA around a 3.6 or 3.7. I woke up during senior week the day after I took my last final, and found, to my surprise, that I’d made Dean’s List and graduated Magna. My thoughts at the time still came back to that clichéd Talking Heads lyric...you know it...“Well, how did I get here?” I still ponder that same damn question right now.

Really, who knows how I got there? All of this feels like a fantasy, 15 months I won’t ever forget. Even as I thought I was being responsible during that Freedom period in my life, keeping up grades, not missing (much) class, writing A papers professors called ‘analytical’ and ‘thoughtful’ and ‘well-researched’, the whole ordeal seems like some wonderful recurring dream. Yet it quickly ends like this: you receive your diploma in late May, shake the college president’s hand, and watch the assembly line of black-gowned graduates in front and back of you smiling, waving, shouting. When you take your seat among the masses, the grin rapidly turns to a furrowed brow, and everyone sits with lips pursed, eyes shifting rapidly, the “holy-fucking-shit” impulse trapped in their bellies.

Then one thing becomes abundantly clear: you’ll never be able to go back. Sure, you’ll make it back for one alumni weekend, one senior week excursion, and an impromptu weekend when you’re 25, realizing you’re way too old to get black-out drunk three days in a row. Your old idea of Freedom will be nothing but a memory by then. The nest-egg is all but fucked. You’ll finally realize Kerouac drank himself to a hideous death at only 47-years old. Things will never be the same again.

Mark of a Dive Bar (Part 1)

2010-02-23T20:22:00.000-08:00

“And it feels right as you lock up your house/Turn out the lights, and step out into the night/And the world is busting at its seams/And you’re just a prisoner of your dreams/Holding on for your life, ‘cause you work all day/To blow ‘em away in the night.” –Bruce Springsteen, “Night” (1975)

Springsteen analyzed blue-collar existence to the core on most of his records: Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ, The Wild, the Innocent, and the E-Street Shuffle, Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town. The first four albums were absolute masterpieces. He’s right about a few things in “Night,” except, for me, the “work all day” thing is bogus. In my case, it’s more like “get off the couch/to not do shit in the night.” You don’t meet girls at these dive bars described so eloquently by Springsteen and his other contemporaries like Southside Johnny. You step out into the night for one reason: to get housed. It’s what everyone else in the place is doing whether they’re sitting by themselves nursing that fifth scotch-rocks or yelling at their friends chugging their ninth pitcher.

You’re used to dive bars in a small college town, especially before graduation. They’re the shittiest bars you’ve ever been in, but you love them just the same. The fucking pre-yuppie bars are irritating—20 minute waits to get drinks, sorority girls all pretending they’re best friends while gossip spreads behind everyone’s back, and guys in lavender pants trying to spit game through half a dozen Jagerbombs. You can only handle that shit for ten minutes, tops.

The place my buddies and I hung out at in school was a fucking dive. It had a few pool tables, cheap beer ($5.00 Yuengling pitchers...enough said), and the overwhelming stench of smoke. Cheap wallpaper, cigarette machines, broken bathroom sinks, the works. After we’d get bored at this place, we’d hit up another bar that was a little classier, but had pretty much all the same attributes—pool tables, locals drinking well bourbon, everyone watching a baseball game and bitching at the TV, a bartender who looked like he’d been working there for at least thirty years. We had great times even though we pre-supposed we’d be leaving the whole dive bar scene behind after graduation. I didn’t.

If you think eventually you’ll be living in New York going to amazing cigar bars, well, you’re kind of out of luck. Some kids got there. I even do every couple of months when I visit my buddies there. But, like many kids looking for jobs in a bad economy, I moved back home, took my seat on the couch, and haven’t done a lot of moving since.

Living in the suburbs isn’t all bad, except for the fact that you’ve gotta start frequenting all the same dive bars you used to try to sneak into in high school and the ones you went to when you were home on breaks in college. The dives at school were great because you knew all the bouncers, bartenders, and girls. But the bars at home aren’t like that since you’ve essentially been on a four-year hiatus. In the ‘burbs, you’re faced with two choices: the expensive bars your parents go to for after-dinner drinks (and the ones you stop by with your elitist friend who goes to Yale) or the shitty bars you always end up at after two hours of debating what you’ll do on a Friday night.

Everyone who’s had to go back to their parents’ basements has had to revisit those bars, some for longer than others. I’ve found about four or five bars in my area that I absolutely adore, though. And whenever we end up arguing about going out at night, we always narrow the list to these same places, even if your one friend suggests that for “a change of pace” you trek twenty miles away to hit that bar with $6.00 beers and shot girls that are “totally hot.” Or that club with a bunch of gel-heads who think bottle service makes them part of some elite group. Fuck that shit, man. I love dive bars. Going to clubs, especially back in my neck of the woods, is enough to induce dry heaves.

From what I’ve gathered from being at home unemployed, and from my buddies who are in similar suburban living situations dealing with the same terrible economy, we’ve found that there are a few types of crap bars. Though you’ll get my unique “stories” here, these are the kinds of places you’ll come across while you’re searching for meaningful existence. You’re not living the dream. And hell, you might even end up working at one of these joints while you try to get your shit together. Here we go:

1. The Neighborhood Bar

My neighborhood bar is one of my favorites in the area. Why? I can drink as much as I want and still make it back to my place and end up safely in bed without any thoughts of getting a DUI.* In fact, it’s usually the last stop after a night of drinking before we end up in my buddy’s garage smoking hookah and having a couple of Elijah Craig’s on the rocks.

There’s a great assortment of people at the neighborhood bar, but it doesn’t cater to one specific kind of person. No Guidos. No Hipsters. No hippies. Just real Topeka people. It’s a bar that people aren’t afraid to go into by themselves because they know they’ll always find someone there to shoot the shit with. If you go every Saturday, you’ll always see the same people. It’s like Cheers with actual personality. One dude even looks like a clone of Norm Peterson.

At this bar, a “Hotel” that probably hasn’t given weary travelers comfort since like 1878, there are all sorts of strange rangers. Last week, I ran into the guy who used to be my school bus driver when I was in 10th grade. The week before that, my neighbor, a mother of two, was hitting on some black dude...until I came in the door. She was supremely glad to see me for some reason, even though the last time I talked to her (two months earlier), she was walking her dog and bitching about “snow in November.”

Every time I end up in that place, I also run into the two gay guys who sit at the end of the bar, cooing to each other and, for some reason, flirting with all of the attractive women. The girls all flock to them—they’re much better company than half of the drunk guys there who come in with beat-up jeans and t-shirts looking like they just got off a double-shift at the steel mill. Those gay guys are always better dressed than everyone—nice overcoats, button-up vests, $150 shirts, and perfectly tailored gray dress slacks or Diesel jeans. The kicker: they’re the only ones in the place allowed to dress like this. When I rolled in there to meet friends after a nice family dinner, sporting a J. Crew sweater and khakis, I got all kinds of strange looks, especially from the bouncer rocking a hoodie and cargo shorts two days after Thanksgiving.

I always end up getting to this Hotel when my buddy Barry is home for winter break. We get down there about three nights a week with a random assortment of friends. While I make it there at least once every couple of weeks when he isn’t around, I end up there bullshitting with the locals all the time when he comes back—if he calls me at midnight on a Tuesday looking to drink, I never say no. Barry’s a smoker, so if I join him outside for a butt once in awhile, we meet some interesting people. The same guys I always see there talk about random shit: football, punk bands, girls, blowjobs, what have you. And always ridiculously loudly. We ran into one guy, trying clumsily to light a Marlboro Red through a liquor-induced fog and talk simultaneously:

“Yo, you guys see the Iowa game today?” the dude asks us.

“Uhhh...no, but their defense looks pretty good this year,” Barry jokes amicably. He doesn’t know shit.

“Fucking right it does.”

“Yeah, so what’s going on man?” we’ll ask in unison.

“Nothin’, what about you guys?”

“Just havin’ a quick smoke. Reflectin’.”

“Yeah, well I live over there, you see that place right across from the post office?”

“Got it. Great place,” Barry says, not sure of where this conversation’s going.

“You guys smoke weed?”

“Uh...” We look at each other, and decide that “Once in awhile,” is a good answer for something like this.

“Well, yo, check out this piece I just picked up this week.” This dude, the Iowa fan, pulls a $100 bowl out of a Lens-Crafters case and shoves it in our face. He then proceeds to show us the quarter he bought in the last couple of days which looks like really good shit.

“Yeah, I just picked up this fucking Haze from my buddy downtown. What you think?”

“Looks fucking great,” Barry says, as I jab my elbow into his side. “Uh, I mean, looks okay, whatever.”

“Yeah, you guys wanna come hit this shit?”

“Uhhh...not really, man. We gotta go finish some beers, and we got a party going at my place in a little,” Barry lies.

“You want some coke? Is that your shit? You look like those college boys. I never made it to college, but I can tell by that polo shirt...”

Obviously shit’d gotten uncomfortable, so we just said “No, thanks.”

“Yeah, that’s cool, whatever. It’s my day off tomorrow, we got a few cases over at our place. Always lookin’ to hang out. You sure? My roommate’s sister’s in town...”

“Of course. We’ll keep it in mind.”

We run back inside, chug the rest of our beers, and get out. You’re never trying to socialize with the people you meet in dive bars, especially not in the neighborhood bar. The Iowa fan is a cool guy. His fiancé is really laid back. But we don’t want to hang with them after closing time. These local bars exist in a vacuum—you’re happy to be hanging out with people while you’re sitting there knocking back a few brew dogs, but you don’t wanna extend the relationship beyond the typical barstool conversation.

But when you’re there, things are great—people will buy you a beer for no reason (if they’re wasted enough), the drinks don’t cost shit, and there’s at least one good bar fight a month. I saw two girls beat the crap out of each other over Christmas break a year ago and when the cops showed up, the brawl didn’t subside one bit until three people got arrested. Maybe someone got tazed, but...eh...who knows. And for some reason, the people who go there, especially the 30-something burnouts, usually know good music. If you want to debate whether The Last Waltz or Woodstock was a better concert film, you’ve found your crowd. No dive bar, not even in college, measures up to the neighborhood bar that’s the only remaining part of a haunted old fleabag motel.

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

*This is sort of a lie. My dad knows a guy who left my neighborhood bar about 16 beers deep, got behind the wheel, and thought he was “just fine.” An hour later, he got pulled over three towns over for driving without his headlights on. He was out-of-his-mind plastered. The kicker: he lives less than a half a mile from the bar. Instead of turning right out of the parking lot, he turned left. It’s given me a new perspective.

Travels With Henry (Part 1)

2010-02-09T20:37:00.000-08:00

“You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.” –Dean Martin

“Where the motherfuck is my Amex?” Henry yelped. It was the end of the night, and we’d probably done a few too many.

“Oh, Rachel’s roommate has it, she’s ordering drinks for people,” I said, thinking Henry wouldn’t mind since he’d been buying booze for half of our program for the last hour like he had an executive expense account.

“What? Seeeeeeeeriously, man?”

“Yeah. I think so. Look...oh Christ, Henry, something happened to your card. That girl just...”

At this moment, Rachel’s roommate had just spiked Henry’s card directly onto the bar in an aggressive attempt to pay the tab. The thing ricocheted right off the counter, spiraled through the air in slo-mo, and dropped like an epic 3-pointer into the trashcan a couple feet away from the bartender. The guy at the bar didn’t notice it right away, but I definitely giggled as I saw it go down. Henry, who’d been fading fast in the past 20 minutes, cocked his head in time to see this epic game-winning shot. Horrified, he half-staggered up from his barstool, the first one of us to dare moving in a solid hour, and tried to make his way down the bar to retrieve his credit card. As he maneuvered through hectic crowds, bumping into people at the bar, he started shouting random obscenities. He’d almost calmed down when he found the girl who lost his Amex.

“What the hell did you do with my card?” he asked the girl who’d just performed an end-zone celebration by ordering 30 Euros worth of drinks and bouncing his card into a receptacle full of colossal bar tabs, empty ginger ale bottles, and every imaginable kind of liquor slushed together.

“Uh...I gave it to the bartender.” she said, defensively. She had no idea what the hell she did wrong.

“No, you threw it in the trash. I can’t fucking believe this.” Henry was trying to keep his usually easygoing demeanor...and having a really tough time. “And what did you buy with it?”

“Like...a few shots, and like a couple of drinks, and I don’t know, maybe like some beers. Like four pints.” She was eyeing Henry up warily, not sure of what his next move would be. The mood was tense. Would he throw a punch? Would he collapse on the ground and get dragged out by bouncers? Or just walk away?

“Oh, Jesus. Come on, Liz! That’s was my dad’s credit card!” Thank God! He’d kept his sense of humor.

Who said that night couldn’t bring us closer to God? Or at least closer to a trashcan in a Dublin pub...

St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland is a holiday where everyone and their brother indulges their 1/16 Irish side, flies to Dublin, and gets absolutely demolished on Guinness, Bailey’s, and Jameson. And your idiot friend always thinks it’ll be funny to order an Irish Car Bomb. When I studied in Dublin, the holiday lasted from about Thursday night to the Tuesday morning after St. Patty’s day. The bars were open later and the people were all drunker than usual (and believe me, in Dublin, this is something to write home about)—the whole thing was batshit crazy. Americans were falling all over themselves, English teens were puking in gutters in Temple Bar, and we had one hell of a good night.

Now, in Ireland, people get fucked up all the time. We met kids on our first week there who, on a Wednesday, started pregaming for a concert around noon. The show didn’t even start until ten hours later. They were drinking double-Red Bull/Vodkas when Joe and I met them, singing some traditional Irish songs, and were, to my surprise, still standing at 2 AM when they showed up at our apartment ready to do shots, two half-empty bottles of Jack in hand. By 4 AM, everyone was so trashed that one of these Irish kids tried to fight my buddy Mikey. Since Mikey is about 5’6” and skinny as fuck, we were lucky to have our 240-pound linebacker friend throw not one, but two kids, through our apartment’s front door that night. While some of these Irish kids lived like this every night, we saved up just a bit of energy to burn on St. Patty’s Day.

My best buddy and roommate in Dublin, Henry, was a pretty moderate ex-New Englander from a nice family. He was easily one of the smartest kids I knew, and was even more interesting when things got a little out of hand. On this Saturday night, a few friends from our group started out doing some light drinking—just killing a couple of Carlsberg pounders before we got on the bus to go into town and meet up at our favorite place, O’Neill’s. After we finished these tall boys up, Henry, Rachel, Joe, Mikey and I all headed into town to meet up with some other kids.

Henry announced about ten times how good of a time he was going to have that night, so we were all on the lookout for erratic behavior early on. When Henry got pretty buzzed, he was one of my absolute favorite people to be around. Within every group of friends, there’s always one kid who’s funnier than everyone else after he’s done a little over-consuming. Henry was that kid in our abroad group—he wasn’t that obnoxious, just bizarre and talkative. He would start singing Bob Dylan songs and dancing around in the streets, pirouetting like a ballerina hopped up on amphetamines, skipping (not running) from place to place at breakneck speeds: “Let’s go to McDonalds...no, let’s get Burger King! No, here, this place has really good burritos. No, seriously, they actually make good burritos in Ireland. No wait! This bar is open for another hour! Should we get another drink? How does it feeeeeeeeeeeeeel?” His speech patterns would make it seem as though he was speaking with one of us, but in fact, he was having the conversation with himself while we served as spectators.

The first bar was tame comparatively, and we were coherent, Henry included. We all started nice and easy at the bar with two or three pints apiece. After all of us slogged through our share of beer, we started getting into some Jameson to speed up the process of getting sufficiently tuned in the shortest amount of time possible. You could sense the nice mellow, woozy feeling as our conversations got louder and more political. (Joe was insisting that Travels with Charley was an altogether better road novel than On the Road, and was prepared to argue his point to the death.) While a couple of kids started ripping shots, I stuck to drinking whiskey on the rocks. In Ireland, drinking this way helps the “keeping your shit together” factor significantly since bartenders actually measure the shot out before pouring it into a tumbler. Henry was holding his own after the pints, switching at halftime to gin and tonics to ‘keep his figure’ (not a joke). I’m pretty sure that Rachel, a slim 5’2” 100% Irish dirty-blonde, was out-doing all of us, by this point covering pretty much half of the tabletop with her empty pint glasses.

I looked at my cell-phone. It was 8:30 PM.

We were likely half in the bag post our few hours of drinking, but somehow, everyone was surprisingly cogent. After getting up from our corner table, we made our way down three flights of stairs and tumbled out onto Grafton Street screaming laughing and shoving each other into walls. We ran into some kids from the program who were unfortunately stone-cold sober, so they just giggled nervously, asking us if we were “like, cool?”

I was beginning to wonder the same thing.

I’m pretty sure my whole experience abroad was an absolute escapist fantasy. Up until a month into my program, I had always been tied down to something “serious” (I say this a bit facetiously). Freshman year I was an athlete, cared a ridiculous amount about maintaining grades, and pledged a fraternity. Every moment of my day was measured out in increments: class from then to then, practice from here to there, pledging from there to eternity. I hardly got out to dink on Thirsty Thursdays. Sophomore year I partied more, but I had a serious girlfriend. When you’re anchored to a woman, a position of ‘responsibility’ in your fraternity and your grades, there’s still a semblance of structure—maybe showing up at class, meeting the girlfriend for dinner and hangout time, going to cocktail, bed, wake-up, shower, repeat. It went like this for five semesters. But sometime in February of my semester abroad, when my girlfriend called me to tell me it was over, I started living what I thought was a Kerouacian fantasy—that of total freedom to drift, listen to new tunes, read great books, avoid schoolwork, and drink too often.

The day after that break-up, I really drowned my sorrows. Getting dumped is always harsh, at least for a couple of weeks. The next afternoon, I trucked up to the convenience store just off campus, bought like two six-packs, and sat in my room imbibing, listening to the Allman Brothers and reading On the Road. I used this break-up as an excuse for acting ridiculously for awhile. Then I got over that relationship, and consciously embraced this feeling of “freedom.” I think everyone was on the same boat here, especially the guys I hung out with. We scheduled a trip to Austria at the last minute. We’d go out five nights a week because we had late classes; they were huge lectures, so showing up was all on the honor system. Because of this, we’d never do the reading for class until it was absolutely necessary (e.g. during finals week). In this position, you no longer feel as though you’ll need an excuse, like a break-up or a family death or a two week long siesta, to act this way. You spend your free time however you feel like it, whether that means packing up and leaving for a five-day weekend or getting trashed on a Sunday night.

But clearly St. Patrick’s Day was a good excuse for going out to get nice and rowdy. We cleared out of our favorite pub, stared at the cold, dark sky, and flipped the collars on our coats up to ours earlobes.

H.R.: Stands for "Hell Reincarnated"

2010-02-07T20:35:00.000-08:00

“God, what a mess, on the ladder of success/Where you take one step and miss the whole first rung/Dreams unfulfilled, graduate unskilled/It beats pickin’ cotton and waitin’ to be forgotten...” –The Replacements, “Bastards of Young”

I really dug that movie Adventureland, the one where Kristen Stewart was not only amazingly attractive but also intelligent, unlike her Twilight character. In the flick, Jesse Eisenberg plays a college-grad who, when his parents suffer a financial setback, must spend his summer after college graduation working in a shitbag amusement park. I’m not sure if that beats sitting on the couch, but whatever, you could write an entire essay on the topic. When the movie started with “Bastards of Young,” I knew I would love it. Then I started living it—that “graduate unskilled” part really hits close to home. You’ll sit around and feel pretty goddamn forgotten.

As I was telling you several posts back, I vowed to myself never to go back to looking (read: begging) for a job like the one for that god-awful insurance racket. Of course, those were my days of idealism, when I had only watched Season Two of Mad Men two times instead of seven. As I laid on my couch fantasizing about being Don Draper a couple of months ago, I realized I was really starting to lose my shit. All of a sudden, my former pledge to myself became a lie, my mom started ‘coaxing’ (read: pretty much begging) me to find a job, and I started looking for meaningless employment once again.

Over the next couple of days, like some kind of hungry hungry hippo, I started applying to jobs left and right: marketing jobs, editorial jobs, internships, things that sounded like they might be remotely related to the basic ability to read and write. Obviously, I was sitting around everyday waiting for an e-mail or a telephone call in response, which was pretty obtuse considering I’m an out-of-work college grad with minimal real world skills. At this point, I wasn’t even angry, but just so completely bored from drafting cover letter after cover letter that I was fantasizing about jumping out of my bedroom window to check if I still had vital signs.

Then I got what I thought were a couple of big breaks.

Earlier in the summer, my friend offered to put in a word for me at her company, some HR mammoth 20 miles from my house. I did my usual elitist thing and told her I didn’t get a 3.7 at a private college so I could go slum it with 23-year olds with three kids and alleged meth addicts. It was a dick move, I know. Of course, a couple months later, when I was curled up in a blanket on the couch watching whatever bad reality show would have me as a viewer, I decided I’d give the job another shot. I called her, sent her my resume, and bam, I had a phone interview set up in like fifteen seconds.

Now, Albert Einstein once wrote the hardest thing in the world to understand was the income tax. For me, the hardest thing in the world to understand is the fucking personality tests companies give you—as you’ll remember from this, I’m not the biggest fan. I hadn’t really known that these buggers existed until a few months earlier, and even when I applied to a more challenging job during senior year, they at least had the decency to make you submit two writing samples before they deep-sixed your application.

This personality test put the one at that insurance company to shame—it was like 250 questions deep, and I was answering it three bourbons deep. After flying through the “I-can-add-and-subtract-and-know-that-smart-and-intelligent-are-synonyms” portion, I was ready to roll. I dove into that fucker like it was the SAT, but that initial energy really didn’t last. They asked me, “If my boss makes what I think is a bad decision, I would challenge him.” Boom—strongly agree. “If I am required to do repetitive tasks everyday, I become bored.” Obviously, strongly agree.

It was the longest, most mind-numbing thing I’ve ever done to get a job that essentially pays you pennies to hassle people day-in and day-out over the telephone. By the time there were three pages left, I was dog tired, panting, and in the middle of another Makers on the rocks. My earlier energy had all but dried up. Then I saw some of the same questions on page eight that I could have sworn were on the first page of this thing. By now, I figured they were going to start asking really unrelated things like “Crest is the only brand of toothpaste I will ever use” and “My predisposition to fits of swearing and punching makes me a difficult person to work with”, and I’d be so out of it, I’d start agreeing.

The personality test is part of a game that I really didn’t know how to play. From my online research, I deduced that many larger companies use these to weed out potentially unfit candidates. In a bad economy, I guess the test makes things much easier for the employer when they have to deal with 679 people applying to the same dogshit job. Essentially, after you take one of these, the personality test software (such a thing does exist) reduces the applicant to a “green,” “yellow,” or “red” candidate where only “green” people are offered interviews.

What’s more, clues about answering these personality tests are, in many cases, online for everyone’s viewing. (In some cases, you can find an actual answer key for the tests online.) There are a host of websites devoted to telling potential applicants how to answer if they want the job in question. And for the gig I tried to get, essentially a glorified customer service position (“marketing” my left nut—you spend all day cold-calling potential clients), you can find websites that’ll tell you exactly how to answer every single question. So, when they asked about challenging your boss if you thought he/she made a poor or unfair decision, you’re supposed to answer “disagree.” In a position like this, giving your boss shit is akin to fucking his wife. You’re expected to put your head down and deal with whatever comes your way. You can’t assume that assertiveness is good for all positions.

But even if this system “works” by allegedly saving corporations menial amounts of capital each year, I’ve read horror stories about personality profiling. On several message boards, you can read about experienced and struggling workers who’ve been out of work for nearly two years. One woman who was applying to several jobs, a couple below her pay grade, said she couldn’t get past the personality test stage for any of the positions she applied to. Even if she looked at a job description and knew she would do well at it, she couldn’t move forward because the “sacred” personality profile killed her chances.

In essence, the potential employee’s reduced to a type, and there’s not much he/she can do to move beyond it. You can’t get an interview if you show up in the “yellow” column unless there’s a major employee shortage which, in this economy, is as prevalent as a dinosaur egg. Moreover, for monstrous corporations who pass out huge salaries and bonuses each year, the amount of “money saved” by using these types of tests is meaningless. Regardless of whether they use personality tests or not, these companies will continue to successfully function from here to eternity.

My thoughts: these tests are a waste, as useless as SAT scores are to predicting someone’s future success. People who faced an unfortunate series of events in a bad economy are passed over continually, and those who are apparently web-savvy can easily bullshit their way into a job they’re not always qualified for. In sum, it’s possible to beat the system if you’re dishonest.

And that’s all I’m gonna say about that.

I made it out of this test unscathed, hoping I hadn’t totally blown it. I get a call from the recruiter the next day, all professional, “Good afternoon, how are you today? This is blah blah blah from blah blah blah and I was wondering if you still had that few minutes to talk.” So far, so good. We get through all the crap, and he says, “Okay, now did you have any trouble taking that personality test?” I was about to tell the truth, but I just said no. Then he pulls up the results, and does sort of a half-cough followed by a few moments of silence. Then that thorny bastard lied to me and said, “Well, gee, we don’t have your results yet, and without those, we can’t move forward.” I couldn’t believe they were resorting to this bureaucratic-speak like I was applying for a new driver’s license and forgot to bring the page with my social security number along. Infuriating. He then tells me that, “Well, I’ll get those results hopefully soon, and then I’ll try to reach out to you later in the week. Okay, goodbye now.”

He must have the shortest fucking arms in the entire world. I never heard another word. I called and e-mailed to follow-up, but the only things in my inbox were messages telling me how I could make my dick longer. It’s frighteningly hilarious. It’s remarkable that, from a company pulling in a ton of its earnings by annoying people on the phone, I couldn’t even get someone to call me back with a straight answer.

I quickly closed that very short chapter of my life, resigned to the fact that doing well at a good higher-ed institution is not conducive to getting a job that you don’t need a degree for. Then, I took a long walk in the cold, laid out in some forest somewhere and waited to die.

A fortnight passed. After I started to get my shit together again (somehow still alive), and my mom and I deconstructed the multitude of reasons for that bizarre response from this clown, I had another break for a job, a marketing position that was probably a little out of my league, and that half of my state’s population must’ve applied for. One of my friends helped get my resume over to the marketing manager at this company, and I thought, “YES! At least those two-bit gatekeepers won’t get their grubby hands on it.”

Wrong.

The next day, I was awoken from a peaceful slumber at 10:00 AM (laugh all you want) by some chirpy woman, and I heard the dreaded words: “This is a recruiter from...”. A lump crawled up in my throat. We start talking about my current job (unemployment, occasional freelance writing) and then she asks me a couple of the standard interview questions, “So name a challenge for me, and tell me how you overcame it.” Greatest question ever—I lay down a solid, short response.

In all fairness, I shouldn’t have expected anything from this exchange because the job was just a bit out of my league, and these people’d been interviewing for the same position for over a month.* But of course, the HR fuckers couldn’t just say no, I’m sorry, you’re not qualified—they instead told me, “Well, you have to take a personality test for this job” (immediately I’m grimacing) “and we’ll send it out to you later in the day.” Later in the day, the next day, and the next week, my inbox was empty like the plains of Nebraska.

Seeing as I’m not the hugest fan of personality tests, you can see why that could be interpreted as a blessing in disguise.

Yet, what really bugs me about the people I spoke to was their refusal to be straight with me. I wasn’t raised to be dishonest, and if I doing the job of one of these schmos, my response to an unqualified candidate would just be “better luck next time, kiddo.” I mean, sure, some guys my dad’s age (whose opinions I really don’t respect) are telling me that “This is the way it works now, so you better get on board. You gotta learn to take personality tests and deal with constant rejection. If you work hard, you’ll succeed.” What a load of horse puckey. Do people really believe this Ayn Rand crap in an economy where the middle class is making less than they were in 1978 (inflation’s accounted for)?**

You can deal with not hearing anything when you just submit an application. It’s a pain to wait for a response you know is never coming, but you live with it. But you don’t tell someone they’ll have a phone interview and then, because of some made-up complications (e.g. your personality test “doesn’t check out”), not even bother to reschedule it and ignore further follow-up calls. You don’t say you’re going to e-mail a person something later in the day and then just say “fuck you, have fun.” These idiots behave like a bunch of pussy elementary school kids. They were the ones who used to run away from the kid they didn’t like on the playground instead of telling him/her to eat shit and go away.

Really, I’m not sure if this is a personal attack on these people, or on the companies that employ these spineless shrews. But I contend that it would’ve been more mature for them to simply say, “Look, you don’t have the qualifications for the job” or “Your personality doesn’t match what we look for in a candidate” instead of hanging up the phone. I don’t mind following up or chasing someone to get a job. But I do mind that when a company offers an interview and then reneges on it without any explanation. A little bit of decency, while at first distressing, eventually goes a long way.

Again, this was a learning experience. I will never apply to a job of this sort again. Sure you graduated unskilled, but you’re learning all the same, albeit from the corner of your basement couch watching Leave it to Beaver. At this juncture, I think that repeating the same routine over and over and over and over and over again amounts to this: if insanity is defined as doing something over and over again (e.g. applying to a ton of jobs you are certainly qualified for) and expecting different results (e.g. someone actually calling you back), I must be stone-cold fucking nuts. You really can’t repeat that process forever.

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*Two weeks later, the person who probably would’ve been my immediate supervisor quit. They still haven’t filled his position yet. The lucky bastard who got the job I applied for must be having a hell of a time trying to learn the ropes.

**Aside: If the wall between employer, or really the ‘gatekeepers’ at these companies, and potential employee is so vast, I don’t think we can claim to be a society that prides itself on creativity, originality, and ambition. If personality tests and one-page resumes define us wholly, and we allow them to define us just to “get that first job,” then we are living in some unbelievably sad times. You gotta take Don Draper’s advice here: move forward. Find a workable plan B and run with it.

My Ten Favorite Films of the Decade (Part 3)

2010-02-03T15:46:00.000-08:00

I'll pull a Roger Ebert. I’ve picked my favorite ten films of the decade, but I can easily choose another ten great ones here, in no particular order. They are all well worth viewing if you’ve time to kill.

In the Bedroom (2001): an intense drama concerning how the tragedy of a murdered son can break apart a seemingly strong, upper-class family Set in rural New England, Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek, as the well-off parents, give two of the strongest performances of the last ten years. This one comes just a hair short of my top ten.

The Hurt Locker (2009): my pick for the best film of 2009. I knew it was a great movie about ten minutes in—it captures the absolute intensity of Operation Iraqi Freedom in a way that every other film since 2003 has failed to. Jeremy Renner gives one of the best performances of the year as a soldier who thrives on the life-or-death challenges of disarming bombs in Baghdad, all while consistently antagonizing the soldiers on missions with him.

Wonder Boys (2001): easily one of the most observant and sarcastic movies I’ve watched about the writing process. Michael Douglas plays a washed-up, marijuana-dependent novelist/literature professor who hasn’t authored a thing in nearly a decade. Tobey Maguire gives a very mature performance as the kid who threatens to surpass his mentor.

Stranger Than Fiction (2006): Will Ferrell turns in a great performance, working outside the now-boring confines of his “Frank-the-Tank” personality. He plays an IRS agent who starts hearing voices, only to find out that the voice is that of a real-life author. The kicker: she’s writing a book where he’ll be killed off in the final pages. Maggie Gyllenhall, Emma Thompson, and Dustin Hoffman are all phenomenal supporting players.

Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001): the story of two sex-crazed best friends from different economic backgrounds who, almost accidentally, set off on a road trip with a woman twice their age to discover themselves. The final scenes reveal a couple of interesting plot twists that change both characters’ lives in ways they couldn’t have imagined at the outset. And, for once, the voiceover actually is actually useful for putting the story in a broader context.

American Beauty (2000): Kevin Spacey gives a wonderful performance as Lester Burnham, the father of a family that’s falling to pieces. To make things better, he tries to relive his youth by quitting his white-collar job, flipping burgers, lifting weights, and getting high as fuck all the time, much to the chagrin of his wife and only daughter. And Chris Cooper, as the homophobic neighbor with a major secret to hide, steals most of the scenes he’s in.

Starting Out in the Evening (2007): another great movie about writing. Leonard Schiller (Frank Langella, always outstanding) is an ailing author who wrote four books earlier in his life that are now out of print. A grad student played by Lauren Ambrose becomes very close to Schiller and tries to use her master’s thesis to bring the author’s work back from the dead.

Mystic River (2003): a phenomenal detective story about three childhood friends who are uneasily reunited after a gruesome murder. The performances from Kevin Bacon, Tim Robbins and especially Sean Penn make this a must-see for any movie buff. This is one of Eastwood’s best films--and it packs a huge punch in last 20 minutes.

The Squid and the Whale (2005): Noah Baumbach proved to be a whiz at writing smart, cutting dialogue with this film. After watching his 1995 comedy Kicking and Screaming, I checked out this pic, a study of a family in complete crisis. With the dissolution of a marriage between Bernard and Joan Berkman (Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney, both excellent), their two kids must take sides in a brutal divorce.

Before Sunset (2004): this talky romantic film is the sequel to Richard Linklater’s impressive 1995 pic, Before Sunrise. This time, the camera follows Jesse and Celine (Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy) through Paris as they talk intelligently about how their lives have changed in the ten years they were apart. But their reunion finds both dissatisfied with their lives to a degree. It’s a brilliantly written and well-acted film, even if it’s not quite as lighthearted as the earlier picture.

My Ten Favorite Films of the Decade (Part 2)

2010-02-02T14:52:00.000-08:00

And here's part 2 of the countdown...

Five: The Dark Knight (2008)

I’m pretty sure only some crazies down in the backwoods cooking meth and Sarah Palin’s comrades up in the arctic missed The Dark Knight when it came out in 2008. Everyone I talked to waited in utter anticipation all summer, slaving away at bad internships and shitty restaurant jobs, for this movie to ease the pain. Seeing this on DVD would have been rewarding, but seeing it on opening weekend in a theatre full of wacko fans was something out of this world. I’m not a big believer in that whole religion thing, but I know when I sat in that theatre in July 2008 and watched Batman and the Joker chase each other through the streets of Gotham, I felt the Lord’s presence in the Manhattan AMC. Rarely have I seen a movie actually get a five minute standing ovation.

It takes a bold person to tell you that The Dark Knight is overrated—simply, it isn’t. It’s the best superhero film of all time, superbly cast and surprisingly well-scripted. It is to its genre what Rocky was to sports movies: The Dark Knight transcends the label of “ good superhero movie” without a doubt. In the dawn of the 21^st century, we hadn’t ever witnessed spectacles like Heath Ledger’s sadistic take on the Joker or Christian Bale’s whole new interpretation of the comic book legend. For once, it looked like the creators of this film, director Christopher Nolan notably, weren’t just trying to make Batman into glossy, throwaway entertainment. This is a dark picture that manages to strip away the camp factor of the earlier movies without sacrificing a bit of excitement.

Four: Match Point (2005)

I really didn’t know anything about Woody Allen when I saw Match Point: it could have been directed by Michael Bay and I would have dug the film. But, after really getting acquainted with the director’s career, you can see that (a) the flick is trademark Woody Allen; and (b) he’s one of the best filmmakers of our time. If you ever saw Bananas or Sleeper, you’ll know that Woody Allen can do slapstick, semi-lowbrow humor better than most. If you’ve seen Annie Hall, you’ve seen what I think is the funniest movie of the last few decades. If you can hang with Manahattan or Hannah and Her Sisters, you know Woody Allen can seamlessly meld humor and drama.

Of course, Match Point bears only marginal resemblance to most of his catalog (excluding the obvious comparison, Crimes and Misdemeanors), not least of all because it’s set in London. Woody Allen, before this, hadn’t made a really good movie since Husbands and Wives with perhaps one exception. Struggling with lackluster scripts populated by boring characters played badly by the likes of Jason Biggs and Helen Hunt, it was time for Woody’s return to form. We got just that in Match Point.

This film tells the story of a former tennis pro (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) who marries a woman, but soon after falls for his brother-in-law’s smoldering fiancée (Scarlett Johansson). They have a passionate affair, but when his mistress threatens to go public, he starts scheming a way to undo the predicament without altering his very comfortable lifestyle. The solution, if you know anything about Woody Allen, is obvious, but the execution is pitch-perfect. Match Point deals with the director’s typical themes like guilt, lust, greed, death, etc., but this pic’s something a little bit different—it doesn’t go for many laughs. This is a straight-up drama/film-noir that holds your attention from the first scene to the credits with little dead space to spare. It’s too bad the 2000s saw Woody Allen tackle only three projects above the sub-par level. But, with its fresh writing and inventive directing, Match Point will not soon be forgotten.

Three: American Psycho (2000)

If you were my friend in college, you quoted American Psycho like you drank Evan Williams—there wasn’t a day that went by when either was missing from your life. American Psycho is a wildly dark and daring film that probably will never receive enough credit because it deals with heedless violence, money, power, cocaine, $4000 suits, and fucking without loving. And all in about 93 minutes. Some people have told me they find this movie stupid or offensive. I think they are nancies.

Now, I’ll be the first to tell you that the movie version of Psycho doesn’t hold a candle to the book by Brett Easton Ellis. But, it’s still beyond awesome. I can remember the first time I saw American Psycho and realized that I’d probably never laughed for that long and hard without being as high as fucking Apollo 13. There are bundles of quotes (“I can do over 1000 now”, “That’s a very fine chardonnay you’re not drinking”, “Don’t touch the watch.”), Paul Allen’s untimely demise-by-axe synched with a Huey Lewis tune, the infamous business card scene, the epic monologues that punctuate the satirical screenplay, the even more famous “Sussudio” portion, and a hilariously brutal conclusion. Bateman’s emotionally empty stockbroker (“I’m into murders and executions mostly.”), played flawlessly by Christian Bale, is a real-life symbol of the overwhelming greed of the 1980s. If someone were to make a film about investment banking and bond trading today, I’m not sure the result would be too much different. The story’s stood the test of time.

I’ve forgone any plot summary, but this is what I will say—if you read what’s above and decide Psycho is likely to offend your impeccable taste, you’re obviously not a golfer. Besides being one of the funniest pics of the decade, it’s also a clever skewering of an industry populated by people collecting fat paychecks for producing very little. Bateman’s life is defined by his shell: he’s judged by others on the quality of his suits and the restaurants he dines in. In his office, he spends time listening to “Lady in Red” on his Walkman and drinking mineral water. Does he ever do real work? Who cares? Simply, there’s no denying that if you graduated from college in the past ten years, this was a staple in your movie rotation.

Two: The Departed (2006)

Martin Scorsese is without a doubt the most accomplished and revered American director in the last fifty years. And I think it goes without saying that The Departed is, against some critics’ judgments, one of Scorsese’s best pictures, ranking alongside (but certainly not outshining) Taxi Driver, Goodfellas and Raging Bull. It is, to use the cliché, a tour-de-force, a movie that every self-respecting man should own. It has all of the director’s typical trade marks: a great central performance (Jack Nicholson, in this case), insane amounts of blood and violence, hilarious supporting turns (Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg are amazing), profanity (“fuck” is uttered at least two hundred times), layer upon layer of plot developments, and an unbelievably tight script.

The Departed, a crime saga based on a 2002 Hong Kong film, is easily better than anything Scorsese put up on the screen in the 2000s, including the boring Gangs of New York and The Aviator. Matt Damon plays Colin Sullivan, a corrupt cop working for mobster Frank Costello (a brilliant, totally bug-fuck Nicholson performance). Enter Leonardo DiCaprio as Billy Costigan, an undercover officer who goes inside the mob to get the necessary evidence to bring Costello to trial. As Costigan slowly loses his grip on reality and Nicholson struggles to find the rat in his mob, things get preposterously out of hand. The film ends in a bloodbath a-la Goodfellas, first with an enormous police shoot-out, and then with a couple of interesting plot twists that carry this thing to an excellent conclusion.

Basically, it comes down to this: The Departed is rampantly violent and side-splittingly funny. Scorsese, even when he’s making us laugh, or when he’s showing us an atrociously violent act, never sacrifices character development. It really is a picture for the ages—I must’ve seen The Departed two dozen times. After that many viewings, it’s clear: Scorsese truly deserved his Best Director nod for this bad boy.

One: Almost Famous (2000)

There are few films in the entire world that you get emotionally wrapped up in, but Almost Famous certainly does a damn fine job of making you really care about its characters. This movie, like a fine wine, only gets better with each passing year. You’ll really like this movie if you appreciate classic rock, but to watch these performances and hear this dialogue is to be transported elsewhere. Get on the bus—when you pop Famous in, you’re with the band.

Besides “Tangerine”, Todd Rundgren, and Thunderclap Newman gracing the soundtrack, the screen is full of Oscar-caliber performances. While I adore Jason Lee’s narcissistic and over-the-top lead singer character, Jeff Bebe (“That is the fucking buzz!”) and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Lester Bangs, the screen really belongs to the three leads: Patrick Fugit as William Miller, a 15-year old journalist for Rolling Stone, Russell Hammond as a Don Henley-Jimmy Page hybrid guitarist for Stillwater, and Kate Hudson as a ‘band aid’ looking for Russell’s undying love. Frances McDormand is also great—she steals nearly every scene she’s in, cautiously treading the line between hilarity and poignancy to make her character actually seem real (“I’m sorry, I can’t concentrate. Rock stars have kidnapped my son.”)

And that’s where the beauty lies in Famous. Because you get caught up in each character’s struggle, the laughs are never cheap. Though the “Real Topeka People” party scene is undeniably the easiest to chuckle at, there are quieter moments. One in particular, where Penny Lane (Hudson) finds out Russell sold her to Humble Pie for $50 and a case of beer, is perfectly done. You'll both smile and tear up while she asks William, “What kind of beer?” What’s not to love?

The first time I saw Famous in 8th grade, I was in my girlfriend’s basement trying to feel my first boob. Of course, I was only a year younger than the film’s protagonist who himself was modeled after the director, Cameron Crowe. But when I traded in the Sum 41 for some of my parent’s vinyl, I came to appreciate this movie like William Miller came to love rock music. For me the choice is easy: this is my favorite movie of the decade, and perhaps of all time.

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That's the top ten. Tomorrow: ten other movies worth checking out if you're unemployed like me and have a few hours to kill.

My Ten Favorite Films of the Decade (Part 1)

2010-02-01T19:57:00.000-08:00

And an additional assortment of lists in the coming days...

I can’t write exclusively about not being employed. In fact, being a bum means I have way more time to think about all of this pop-culture shit. And clearly I’m a little behind on the whole “end of the 2000s” list trend. About a month late to be exact. Sorry about that.

As the godforsaken decade drew to a mundane close, we could’ve looked back on all kinds of shit not really worth discussing here. There are things more important than spouting all of CNN’s talking points about the Iraq War, Afghanistan, nuclear weaponry, health care, and all that other happy horseshit that’s clogged our cerebral arteries since GWB’s first day in office. There are actually interesting topics: music, movies, books, and TV shows. Say what you will, these things matter. With that, I give you my ten favorite movies of the last ten years—not the best movies, mind you. I’m not that intelligent, so why not be totally biased? We'll start with number ten and move on down. Bottom five today, next five tomorrow. And at the end, I'll throw in a few honorable mentions just for the hell of it.

***

Ten: There Will Be Blood (2007)

This and Boogie Nights are P.T. Anderson’s masterworks, both standout films in their respective decades. Blood, based on the book Oil! by Upton Sinclair, tells the rise-and-fall saga of Daniel Plainview, a ruthless oil tycoon (an astounding performance by the always-reliable Daniel Day-Lewis). It took me awhile to see this one for reasons unbeknownst to me, but when a couple of my buddies finally brought over a fifth of bourbon and this DVD on a Tuesday night, I wasn’t about to put up a fight. The first thirty minutes alone, completely devoid of dialogue, are enough to really zonk you; but as the movie continues, Plainview and a business-savvy, born-again Christian kid (Paul Dano) manipulate and humiliate each other senseless. The ending, that takes place with way too much hard alcohol and a bowling pin, is one of the darkest concluding sequences of the last decade. Your view of this film will mature and your appreciation will deepen with each successive viewing. It’s a timeless piece about the true costs of greed. (And the milkshake quote is priceless.)

Nine: American Splendor (2003)

This largely overlooked film told the story of file clerk turned underground comic book author Harvey Pekar. This pic is something really special. American Splendor, the comic book Pekar penned with the help of artist Robert Crumb, is a cult rag based on his mundane, everyday struggles in Cleveland, Ohio. Paul Giamatti, in a phenomenal performance, plays the reclusive file clerk to a T, while Pekar himself makes several appearances throughout the duration alongside his real-life family and friends. Anyone who’s a film connoisseur should watch this one as much for the dialogue as for the artistic techniques the filmmakers employ, shifting effortlessly between the comic book illustrations, the real-life Harvey, and Giamatti’s performance. Hope Davis also does a great job interpreting Harvey’s quirky, long-suffering wife Joyce.

Eight: The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Call me whatever four-letter word you want, but I thought Rushmore, while inspired in parts, was downright mediocre. The film wasn’t a very compelling look into the life of an adolescent or his infatuation with an older female teacher; rather, to me, it seemed like an excuse to make a hackneyed indie film with muted pastel backgrounds and a pretty good soundtrack. Tenenbaums, on the other hand, gets the texture part right without sacrificing interesting characters in the mix. Gone is the irritating Max Fischer, traded in for a cast headed by veteran actors Gene Hackman and Anjelica Huston in two wonderful performances. Royal (Hackman), the Tenenbaum family patriarch, is a rich asshole who’s all but abandoned his family when the film starts—that is, until, he is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and attempts to make amends with his ex-wife and estranged children. Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson, and Owen Wilson do excellent work as Royal’s insanely quirky sons. The dialogue rings much truer than that of Rushmore, and the carefully selected soundtrack synchs up wonderfully with what’s happening on screen—especially the scene where Royal and Ben Stiller’s uptight kids go on a spree that includes shoplifting, illegal gambling, driving go-karts, and a familiar Paul Simon tune.

Seven: The Lives Of Others (2006)

The Lives of Others, a film that takes place in East Germany during the terrors of communist rule, is something you don’t see everyday. A very intelligent thriller, it wraps you up in the spying techniques used during that tumultuous time. In Cold War-raddled East Germany, people who spoke or wrote critically about the state were almost always banished or killed. In Lives, playwright Georg Dreyman gets a free pass—that is, until a high-ranking government official falls for his girlfriend and wants Dreyman taken out of the picture.

The movie, spoken in German, subtitled in English, is extraordinarily captivating. The acting is top-notch, including Oscar-caliber performances from all three leads. You’ll get chills from the beginning parts of the film as the government’s most learned wiretapper, Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler, looks into the lives of Dreyman and his lover and gets completely caught up in their everyday struggles. Your spirits will lift as Wiesler eventually makes a decision that leads to a happier ending than one would expect from a film with such dire subject matter. Though most Americans are skeptical of any movie not spoken in the plainest of English, The Lives of Others is an experience that would likely change anyone’s mind.

Six: High Fidelity (2000)

If there’s a movie that made music snobbery look fucking cool, it was High Fidelity. John Cusack, Hollywood’s (and America’s) favorite everyman, played Rob Gordon, a recently jilted Chicago record store owner. His dumpy boutique is frequented by slacker clerks Barry (Jack Black, in his best-ever performance) and Dick (Tood Louiso), and a host of other misfits, from some uber-nerdy Beefheart fan to a middle-aged dude coming in to ask for “Just Called to Say I Love You.” The film shows life as it’s really lived and love as it’s really lost. Not only do you dig spending a couple of hours with these music nerds, but you’d want to hit the bar after watching the DVD and hang out with people just like Rob, Barry, and Dick.

Rob Gordon is a college dropout who compartmentalizes his life in a series of “Top Five” lists, including one about his toughest breakups. Laura, the one who got away (while he screams “You’re Gonna Miss Me” by the 13^th Floor Elevators) in the opening scene, is the broad he can’t seem to shake. He obsesses over the top five things he misses about her at every chance while descending into a chain-smoking, melancholy funk. These scenes never fail to amuse. But as Rob works his way through the past, he comes to see exactly what he missed out on by being a noncommittal boyfriend to her for years.

Everything about the movie just makes you glad because it somehow keeps a sense of humor even in the saddest moments. You’ll dig it more-so if you can hang with a soundtrack that’s clearly geared toward more gifted rock and roll listeners. If you like Lou Reed, sarcastic dialogue, and a great love story to boot, you’ll love High Fidelity. It only seems ironic that this one falls just outside of my “Top Five” movies of the decade.

***

The rest to come tomorrow.

The First Cut Is...Eh, Whatever

2010-01-30T14:39:00.000-08:00

“Right now, this is a job. If I advance any higher in this company, this would be my career. And, well, if this were my career, I’d have to throw myself in front of a train.” –Jim Halpert, "The Office"

So, I was obviously way too busy “studying” (i.e. going to the bars five nights a week, barbequing everyday, and watching reruns of Saved By The Bell) senior year to really go out there and look for any meaningful, respectable job. While some of my friends had jobs set up for them after graduation through some lucky alignment of the stars (or finance degrees), I spent my time having a lot of fun and not worrying about the whole career thing. Of course, when one of my fraternity brothers told me it was time to kickstart my life, it was three weeks before graduation, and I wasn’t in the mood. Senior week was coming. I pushed things off—can’t let that job search get in the way of day drinking (still don’t regret that decision).

I graduated with a good GPA, and left on graduation day feeling pretty impressed with myself. I mean, shit, I got to wear a medal when I accepted my diploma. But then, I got back home, and realized that the job search had to start someplace. That place was, I’m a bit ashamed to say, A Large Insurance Company (ALICo). After all my schooling, and the late night debates about whether Radiohead or Wilco had more of an influence on 21^st century Latin American diplomacy, I was going to be a fucking insurance salesman. Dare to dream, right?

My cousin, an employee of this firm, referred me to ALICo, saying that I could probably get the job if I wanted it. He said I could do it until I found something more suited to my major or internships. In hindsight, had I actually gotten this job, I’d still be selling insurance—and that’s depressing. Anyway, I interviewed for it.

The first part of the process is one of the stupidest things companies are doing nowadays: a personality test. I’m sure you know what I’m referring to if you work in corporate America or applied to a job with any reasonably big company at some point. Obviously, these tests were created so some paper-pushers could weed people out easily because they lack the skills to judge others’ character. So, the tests ask all kinds of inane questions like “I usually take charge in a group situation” or “I’m afraid of commitment” or what have you. I guess through these personality tests (clearly dreamed up by some 25-year old psychology grad student) they can determine whether you’ll be good at the ‘fast-paced’ job of answering phones all day and giving people insurance quotes.

Then, there’s a typing test, which, I’m very proud to say, I passed with flying colors. Finally, you get to the best part—the basic math and reading test where they see if you have grasped a 7^th grade skill set. After you finish the chopping block portion of the ‘interview’, you go home and anxiously await the call.

The next day, I got a call from some googly-eyed HR woman to tell me that ALICo would like to “move me along to the next stage” of the interview process, meaning she’d call me up and ask me a bunch of questions about sales and goals and challenges. I got through it fine—bullshitted my way out of pretty much every question, and made it sound like I’d been some kind of amazing pharmaceutical salesman and overcame like 100 obstacles in the past four years. She was eating it up.

When I got to the final interview, the whole thing went up in smoke real quick. After making me watch a ridiculous team-building video or something, googly-eyes starts the interview asking if I “understand what a background check is” a dozen times before telling me that I’m going to “be on the telephone a lot” and “you only get x-number of breaks each day, and if you take an extra minute because you’re stuck in traffic or had to feed your pet iguana, you’ll get in a lot of trouble.” I’m smiling through all of this, or grimacing, because she told me all of this during the phone interview the previous day.

After continually smacking me in the face with the perfectly obvious, she starts asking me questions—the same things she was asking me the day before. She offers the challenge question again, and then a couple of experience questions, and finally begs me to tell her about my internship last summer just one more time. I was ecstatic—these fucking blowhards had screwed up and given me the same interview twice!

I was wrong. Googly then informs me that, after a forty minute chat, I’m going to interview with one of the sales guys. Great—get to meet the guys down in the trenches, fighting tooth, fang and claw for every dollar, every policy sale. But then, in walks Brian, a guy with a real heavy Napoleon complex, a wanna-be trash-‘satche, and a lisp. I held my laughter back, my heart beating, figuring this was going to be it for me; I was going to start laughing in the middle of the interview, and I’d feel terrible because, hey, the mustache that looked like it was from a B-list ‘70s porno wasn’t really his fault.

We sit down, and things get off to a rocky start. He informs me for the 39^th time that I’ll be working on the phone a lot and will have to pass a background check. He asks me if I know what a background check is, and by this point, I’m thinking of humoring him by saying, “No, Brian, does it matter if I robbed a 7-11 last year, and got caught drunk-driving on the wrong side of the road screaming ‘WELCOME TO ENGLAND!’ with four of my friends in the car?” Then he asks me about my old jobs. He mispronounces both of the companies I did my internships with, and I make the mistake of politely correcting him. By this point, the room is sweltering, and I think I was probably losing my composure a little bit. It was like some kind of offshoot of Groundhog Day called Interview Day where a constant stream of interviewers came in and asked me the same questions over and over again.

Things got harder. He starts asking questions about procedure, protocol, the top qualities a salesman can have, if I’m comfortable switching between screens on a computer, etc. I thought I was doing okay since he praises my GPA, and says it looks like I worked “real hard” in college. But all along the way, he’s viewing me with skepticism. I’m getting self-conscious because every time I use a word that has more than six letters, he looks up from his pre-written question sheet to give me a once-over through his transition lenses which are now half-dark. And then I know what’s gonna happen—my application will be in the wastebasket before I put my Wayfarers on outside the building. We go through more of the horse-and-donkey routine, me questioning him about the job, him politely answering. I ask him if he has any amusing anecdotes about the job, figuring that selling insurance to the elderly would merit at least a few chuckles. Stonefaced, he says, “Nope, can’t think of a time when that happened.”

So now I’m obviously not getting this job, but I find that I’m holding out shreds of hope for either outcome: I don’t want this job or the experience of working with some douche-noodle like Brian yelling at me about metrics, but I don’t want to be humiliated by failing at my first attempt to get a job that I’m pretty sure sixteen year olds with basic reading skills could do.

Yeah, I got humiliated. But, really, it coulda been a lot worse. I couldn’t believe this guy Brian sunk my application. After all of those interviews, this doofus tells me I’m no good for the job. I thought maybe I’d damaged my brain with all of that cheap whiskey in college (probably did). And then, with some help from my friends (the ones who talk a lot about Radiohead and Latin American politics), I realized that I would be terrible at selling insurance—I mean, these teetotalers were practically giving out the death penalty for people who took more than a half-hour for lunch. Could I envision myself sitting in a cubicle all day, having people ask me about insurance? Of course not. I guess the problem was, I didn’t want the job, and he could tell that, on some subconscious level (or after my constant questions about moving up in the company or ending up in another department), I'd be shitty at that job . That son-of-a-bitch.

And finally, I thought back to a true American hero, Jim Halpert, who slaves away all day at a shitty job for a boss who makes this guy Brian look like Stephen fucking Hawking. What if I stuck with it—all these guys who worked at ALICo said they started out on other career paths, but “after eight years, [they] just really love selling insurance.” Are they serious? I would be one of these dudes, and that scared the shit out of me. Of course, Jim Halpert has bonuses: Pam and Dwight Schrute. I’m pretty sure ALICo was full of guys like Dwight, though, none of them were even remotely funny.

I've seen this all before, though. In a shitful economy, tons of people--recent college grads, especially--seem to be trying to shoehorn themselves into ‘careers’ that they’re not well-suited for at all. Some kids go to law school, some kids go to grad school, some kids take the first job that they're offered because they see unemployment, or even underemployment, as a personal failure, a waste of talent. But, to make a move that will affect your entire life without really thinking it through is suicide. It's akin to jumping into the deep end without taking basic swim lessons.

I learned this with this goddamn insurance company; I've figured out enough in the past 20-some years that I wouldn't have lasted at that job. Frankly, I would've been pretty bad at it. And watching employees there, people who at one time had some idea of doing something remotely interesting and were now making a living in stifling cubicles, performing the same tasks day-in and day-out, you get a real sense of what "commencing nowhere" looks like in the flesh. Sure, it’s great to come home a month after graduation and brag to mom, dad, and your college friends about landing your first job, but at what expense down the road? I’d say you’re better off washing dishes or something. That'd at least give you time to daydream about, as Lester Burnham (American Beauty) said, “a life that less closely resembles Hell.”

I returned to the job search soon after, determined not to apply for a job like that ever again—or at least not for the next three months when my mom started referring to Benjamin Braddock every few hours and humming “The Sounds of Silence” when she did the laundry. Things didn't necessarily work out as I hoped in the coming months (they still haven't), but that extra time to think has done me quite a bit of good.

"Take My Job...Please."

2010-01-27T16:16:00.000-08:00

I'll be here all week; try the veal.

Dear Reader,

Welcome to Commencing Nowhere.

My name isn’t important—this is obviously true, since no recruiter from any of the fucking companies I applied to even bothered to read my name after they spent a grand total of 7 seconds perusing my resume.

Let’s start with an academic autobiography: I graduated from a good high school with a great GPA and class rank. I did very well on my SATs, and applied to an unnamed liberal arts college that promised me the moon. Everyone says if you go forth in this pattern—joining clubs, gaining leadership skills, getting challenging internships and maintaining top grades, you’re gonna be just fine. White-collar jobs will tumble from the sky and your wingtipped feet to greet you with fantastic salaries, benefits and promises of upward mobility. While smart people called me a fool to go forward with a liberal arts education that promises “diversity” and “a truly unique education that gives you a background in so many subjects” instead of something lucrative like science or mathematics, I bought the liberal arts dream.

I graduated from college with a 3.7 back in May, had serious leadership roles in a couple of campus organizations—and fretted daily about finding a job. I applied for shitty jobs and didn’t get them; I applied for jobs that were associated with my major and never heard back from anyone; and I sat in interviews where people with the intellectual capabilities of fleas mispronounced the names of the companies where I interned. Then, they never called me back. I fretted day after day, sitting in my basement, waiting for one of those so-called “essential” connections to help me get a job.

And here I sit. Unemployment’s become a way of life.

At first, I blamed my alma mater. While I still agree that these liberal arts schools overcharge you to give you a degree that, at this point, is barely worth the price of that paper it’s printed on, I pushed the responsibility for my unemployment off on them. “I did so well here, and did what I was supposed to do, and now I’m fucked.” Then, I blamed myself. “I should’ve known better than to pick political science/English/sociology as my major.” I guess I’m correct on both accounts—when the college’s message is put to the test, the emperor is stark naked. And I should’ve done my research before I believed it. If all I wanted after graduation was to walk into some kind of decent entry-level white-collar job, I probably should have chosen a bit of a different course.

But recently I was up in New York, and I started to realize something while talking to one of my old fraternity brothers: unemployment can really be hilarious. It was like a giant weight lifted off of my shoulders as we sat there in a cigar bar, drinking scotch, and philosophizing about the meaning of work. Unemployment isn’t miserable—it’s a time to build great memories. The interviews. The sitting around watching Lost all day long. The not getting out of your pajamas until dinner time.

You naysayers out there who either (a) have a good job; or (b) have shitty job just to have one or; (c) are unemployed but haven’t given up hope are probably about to lambast me. “Stop bitching about not having a job and get off your ass.” To those morons, I have four words: Go fuck a collie. If you really think it’s that easy just because you read like one Ayn Rand book in 12^th grade, then hear it from me—it isn’t.

But, chances are, many of you’ve been going through the same bullshit application/resume/phone interview with Human Resources idiot/in-person interview/second in-person interview/(maybe a third one in there too, just for good measure) for all kinds of jobs, and it’s totally stressing you out. Getting a job sucks now more than ever. Getting a shitty job sucks even worse because you have to jump through the same hoops for a job that pays as much as your first job working the drive-thru at Wendy’s.

You see? Unemployment can get rough, but why not stand back and laugh. Look on the bright side: it’s not the end of the world. You don’t have a terminal illness and the couch in your basement is pretty comfy. Jersey Shore re-runs are just waiting to be watched. If you think getting a job is so crucial to your social status, so that when someone says in a bar, “What do you do?”, you’re terrified to say that you work as a waiter or a caterer or a failing writer, you’re in the wrong place. Why not just embrace it? You’re unemployed/underemployed and you’re fucking proud of it. Brag about how much freedom you have, how you don’t have to deal with the grind everyday, how you go to the gym whenever you want to and go out drinking on Tuesday nights just for the hell of it. Studies show that most men define themselves by whatever they slave away at sort of happily for between eight and fourteen hours a day. Don’t be that guy. Not having a job doesn’t sound so bad now, does it? Believe me—I’ve tried this approach in conversation, and people eat it up.

This thing exists for people to share their fears, stories, criticism, whatever—we’ve all had that terrible interview, or woken up with night sweats during first semester senior year of college wondering who’ll actually hire you, or applied to seventy jobs only to receive ten written rebuffs and sixty non-responses from the HR bimbos who can’t even be bothered to send you a boilerplate rejection e-mail. Once you get past being offended by it, you can laugh at it. Of course I’m bitter, but I’m not gonna let them get the best of me: I’m laughing in their faces all the way to the bank...errrr, not the bank, but I digress.

So, stop worrying. Chances are, the unemployment rate will only get worse this year. Chances are, if you’re a liberal arts grad like me, your college is pretending to help you: career fairs, networking days, college job boards, the whole lot of scams. Take it from me: this shit is useless. Unless your dad/dad’s friend can hook you up after graduation or you majored in finance, you’re going to be hitting the skids and picking up Starbucks applications like the rest of us. Embrace it—you’re screwed. It’s never been so much fun.

Sincerely (Broke),

Commencing Nowhere