Jack Daniels, Jersey Girls, and Russian Strippers: A Weekend in Manhattan, Day 1

I hope you all had a happy holiday weekend. The keg cooler that I got for Christmas will soon ensure that my future weekends will be equally as happy, and filled with plenty of drunken revelry to write about in this here blog.

But I have a story to tell. This past weekend, I went to Manhattan for a weekend of drunkeness in a different section of the eastern seaboard.

I drank a lot, received several lapdances, and possibly made an ass out of myself more times than I think.

I had only been to Manhattan once before in my life, a day trip with my dad. It was a rainy day, and it also happened to be the day that Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston announced they were separating, which was in January 2005.

I was 21 at the time, but didn't drink while there, and being as I was only there for a day, didn't do too much in the way of revelry.

But let us start at the beginning.

Our story begins at 7 a.m. on Friday, December 26. I am up earlier than I would normally be to go to work, and I am on the way to Union Station, where a train will take me and my party to the Big Apple.

We got to NYC at about 12:30, and headed to our hotel, the Westin at Times Square. Top notch facility, even though they charge you $15 a day to use their wireless network, which is utter hog shit.

From there, we headed out to a bar called "Smith's Restaurant," which happened to be in my range of site from my hotel room window.

A quick lunch and a few beers later, and it was time to head to ground zero. We were going to meet several people at the church right across from ground zero, which was built in the early 1700's, and also happened to suffer no damage on 9/11.

We had dinner reservations at p.m., so we headed to a bar to kill time. The bartenders at the place we went (the name escapes me) happened to have two of the finest asses I have ever come across in my quarter-decade on this planet.

Two asses that, in the words of Champion Kind (the sportscaster in Anchorman), "I'd like to slap some barbecue sauce on that big ol' butt and just uh burr burr burr burr burrrr. OOwwwwooooo!!!!"

Those kind of asses.

So we had a few beers, played some touchscreen Photo Hunt (which I officially have lost my touch (pardon the pun) for, I couldn't even beat the high score of 249,000. There were times when I left 249,00 points for Photo Hunt in the toilet every morning), and killed some time.

Dinner was at a place called Fraunces Tavern, and this is where things get interesting. The building itself is very historical, it's actually a museum, and the restaurant leases the ground floor.

It's also the site of the first domestic terrorist bombing, in 1975, when some Puerto Ricans left a suitcase bomb in the dining room.

I start out by ordering a local beer, called Blue Point Toasted Lager. Very tasy, but as my dining companions began to put down martinis and Long Island Ice Teas like it was their job, I realized that I needed to step the fuck up.

So I ordered my old standard, Jack and Coke. Very few things in life are as consistently good as a Jack and Coke, and that's why it is a drink of choice for me.

I got my first one, and it tasted kind of funny. Kind of like.......scotch.

Now, I've only had scotch once in my life, and it was I was in Boston in the summer of 2005. Some people were buying drinks for everyone, only they were buying nothing but Scotch and Sprite.

I only had a few sips of that drink, and I had many more in the course of the evening, but all I tasted the next day was scotch, so I think I had a pretty good idea what cheap scotch tastes like.

But I wasn't drunk enough to cause a scene, plus the Scotch and Coke wasn't half bad (okay, yes it was, I was trying to take my second train trip of the day, this one toe drunkville, so I ignored it), and quickly finished the drink.

I ordered another one, made sure I clearly enunciated the syllables for "Jack and Coke" and waited for the drink to come.

It did and.....scotch. What the fuck?

I would like to tell you a made a scene, and it ended up with me maybe destroying a priceless artifact of American history, but alas, I took the pussy route, and kept my mouth shut.

Well, kind of. About three-quarters down the drink, I asked the person sitting next to me to taste my drink. He replied that it definitely was Scotch. I asked the female on my other side, and she replied that it was definitly Jack.

So now we had a dilly of a pickle on our hands.

I called the waiter over, asked him to taste it, and he immediately knew it was scotch. He said he had been telling the bartender Jack, and he had even written Jack down.

I was in the process of wondering if there was some shitty Scotch that I didn't know about called Jack McFuckstick's or something like that, but I couldn't think of anything.

Needless to say, the Jack and Coke came, and I polished off several of them to cleanse the palate.

It is not approximately 7:45, everyone I am with, ncluding myself, it drunk, and we decided to take the party back to the vicinity of our hotel.

We get to the hotel bar, and there is an Irishman and a Chinese (Korean? Vietnamese? Filipino?) guy tending bar. The Asian comes over to the three of us and asks for our drink order.

I order a Jack and Coke, one guy orders a Long Island, one guy orders a Martini.

Well, apparently I had the only drink that the guy knew how to make. Because instead of the Long Island, he made a mixture of Captain Morgan, sake, and Southern Comfort, all in a Martini glass. What the fuck? It tasted like what I imagine molasses and rat poison might taste like.

Instead of the dirty Martini, the guy made some red-ass fruity drink which would probably cause a uterus to sprout immediately inside of you after one drink, and put a fetus in that uterus after the second.

So we leave the hotel bar and head down the street, where Irish Car Bombs and shots of Patron abound. We soon decide to go to a strip club.

And here is where trouble starts. Knowing that the trip was coming up, I had gotten plenty of cash. And when cash meets a strip club, you end up leaving most of the former inside of the latter.

This night was no exception.

Usually, I am content to order $9 beers and leave a couple bucks in a G-String, reducing the financial damage, but given the amount of hard liquor that was already in me, that wasn't in the cards.

The first chick that comes and sits on my lap asking if I want a dance ends up getting an affirmative, and within thirty seconds, her thonged ass is grinding up and down on my shit.

Silly me, I had forgotten how much fun it is to have attractive women clothed in nothing but dental floss grope me.

I ended up getting three lap dances that night, each of which had their own subtle differences, which are noted below:

Stipper 1:

• A petite latina with dark hair, about 5'6".
  
• Good technique. She was good at using my genitals as a fulcrum to switch from grinding on my junk, to the straddling me with her tits in my face.
  
• She also went the extra mile, and ran her hands underneath my shirt, which earned some bonus points. And by bonus points, I mean stains in my underpants.
  

Stripper 2:

• She was probably my favorite. A wiry, raven-haired girl with a knack for conversation in a mild Russian accent. She was tall, 5'10" (I love tall chicks).
  
• While the dance wasn't the best, she added the crucial element that none of the other girls did: sound. She was moaning like crazy, and it definitely earned her some extra tip.
  

Stripper 3;

• She was more of the classic stripper. Tall, blonde, emotionally dead inside. But she was hot, I was drunk, and she definitely had the best set of breasts out of the three.
  
• She gave a good dance, her talent was running her hands through my hair and hideous beard, which was pretty sexy.
  

My one regret? All three of the strippers were white. I am very fond of black chicks, and I realized after I left that I should have taken advantage of some flava.

So I drank a few more $9 beers, turned down chances to go into the Champagne Room (after all, there is no sex in the Champagne Room), and decided that I was shitfaced at about 1:30 a.m.

I stumbled back to my hotel room, reeking of cheap stripper cologne, and having failed to "save" any strippers from that tragic life they were leading.

Oh well, you can't win 'em all.

Tomorrow: Day 2, in which our hero meets two jersey girls, and tries his damnedest to drain Manhattan of all its Jack Daniels.

How's that for a tease?

A Christmas Gift For Thee

Wrapper's delight

I did it again.

I tell myself every fucking year that I'll change, and every fucking year I do the same thing.

I go Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve.

Why? I knew what gifts I needed to get as early as Dec. 1. Hell, I would have been able to order them online and have them delivered to my goddam doorstep if I didn't suck so bad. Some gift ideas were impossible, since they required time to actually manufacture.

I suck.

So I pushed it back to Christmas Eve, where I had to fight 1,000 other fuckers who are just as lazy as me, plus visit some family, plus find time to wrap this shit.

But I do my shopping fighting a crowd at every parking lot, entrance and checkout line as I go.

My last stop: Border's books, for a book for my mom and my dad. Sounds simple enough, right?

Wrong-o, fuckface.

As soon as I get into the store, I see a line that stretches to the back of the store, and almost to the front again, a full store-length of douchebags, all of whom will be out of this God-forsaken hell-hole before me.

I fight the masses of the great unwashed to find the books in question, and any thought about buying myself a glorious present (because, after all, only I know what I truly need), I get in line.

In front of me: an old lady with a cane, who was buying a bunch of shit from that Twilight movie, pewter bracelets and other baubles for the discerning poser/vampire teenager.

Four people on front of me: a family, that grows from two people, to four people, to SEVEN FUCKING people in the space of five minutes.

Now, by just sitting in line, I have already gone backwards, all because these fucks are breaking the social contract that defines long-line etiquette.

But I keep my mouth shut. Mostly because Yahtzee on my cell phone is stemming the tide of insanity that threatens to break forth in the unsuspecting populace.

The closest I came was when the lady in front of me dropped a bracelet, and was struggling with her weight distribution on her cane while trying to pick it up. I wanted to kick the cane out from under her, just to take her spot and save myself maybe thirty seconds. That's how pissed I was.

But I made it. I bought the books, was calmed down by the saccharine sweetness of the cashier (who also happened to have a great rack), and I made my way to the exit. Next stop: A place to buy a gift bag.

Brief side note: Whoever invented wrapping paper should burn in hell. I consider myself to be a pretty smart guy. I'm good at math, my spatial reasoning skills are a little above average, and I made a B in high-school honors Geometry. But I cannot wrap a gift to save my life.

The last attempt I made was two years ago for my mom's birthday (since she usually wraps for me), and I went through a roll and a half of tape, almost an entire roll of wrapping paper, and it still looked like something that was filled with anthrax at a senator's office.

Back to the now.

As I was walking out, I saw a table of girls that seemed to be heaven sent. No, not for the reason you think, it was a table filled with girl scouts. Okay, now get your mind out of the gutter. I've never statutory raped anyone in my life. Those records are sealed.

No, they were wrapping gifts for people, for free, but donations were welcome. What a great idea.

I dropped off my two books with them, and since I didn't have any cash, I told them I would run to the ATM to get their donation.

It wasn't until I got outside of the store, and was walking to the nearby supermarket to the ATM when a conundrum presented itself to me.

Namely, the minimum amount to withdraw is $20. I'll be damned if I was going to give these adolescent cockteases in their seductive brown aprons twenty of my hard-earned dollars to wrap my gifts.

I had two choices: A) Buy something, like a pack of gum, which would give me several ones and a five, which I could then donate; or B) Just ask the Girl Scouts if they had change, creating a potentially awkward situation with them and their chaperon.

Due to my previously stated love of awkward moments, I decided on option B.

I went back, grabbed my presents, thanked them, and started rooting through their donation jar for change.

"Uh, excuse me sir? What are you doing?" The chaperon asked.

"Don't worry about it cunt, I'm just looking for change," I replied. Okay, not really, but I was at my tipping point, pardon the pun.

"I need change for this twenty," I said.

"Oh! Well, don't you think these girls could use that twenty more than you?"

I almost slapped her in the face. I work hard for my money, and these little bitches deserve my fucking twenty dollars?

"Uh, unless I get to deflower each and every one of these girls before their wedding day, ma'am, there is no fucking way they are getting my twenty dollars."

"Sir! You need to watch your mouth!"

"HOW ABOUT YOU WATCH YOUR FUCKING MOUTH, WHORE"

"Please, keep your voice down, you're making a scene."

"YOU AND YOUR LITTLE STABLE OF SLUTS ARE TRYING TO DUPE ME OUT OF MY FUCKING MONEY, AND I'M THE ONE OUT OF LINE? DREAM ON, CUNT!!!"

Not, very Christmas-y, I know, but it had been a long day.

But, I'm happy to report, I was able to compose myself and leave, causing minimal damage.

Read: I picked up their donation jar, and flung it across the store, leaving a trail of quarters and ones all the way back to the Manga section, creating quite a scene.

Luckily, I was able to escape in my car, and avoided any potential repercussions from "The Man."

And with this, I leave you to your own personal yuletide celebrations:



Merry Christmas you filthy animals.

Sierra Mist Cranberry Splash: Hallowed be thy name

If God invented anything better, he saved it for himself.

You've heard that (at least I have) when referring to a multitude of things: heroin, vagina, seeing your favorite team win it all.

For me, it's simply Sierra Mist Cranberry Splash, the greatest soda (and liquid in the physical universe we occupy) ever invented.

I still remember the day I heard about it. It was late 2006, and I heard a radio ad while at home from my holiday break in grad school.

I've always loved cranberry flavored things, which also goes hand in hand with my intense dislike of yeast infections. Cranberry juice, cranberry sauce.....well, I guess that's about it.

I'm not a big soda guy either. Sure, Dr. Pepper is like heaven in a can, but besides a brief love affair with Vanilla coke my senior year of high school, I don't drink too much.

Unless I'm using cola as a mixer for rum and/or bourbon, soda doesn't play a large part in my life.

But then again, I've always been a sucker for specialty sodas. Maybe it's the fact that I can't walk into a 7-11 365 days a year and get a Mountain Dew Baja Blast, which is only at Taco Bell, that makes it so appealing.

I remember my brief fling with Pepsi Holiday Spice. I was a junior in college, and had turned 21 the previous August.

Since I was always broke as shit (after all, pot costs money), my main alcohol consumption came in the form of cheap fifths of dark rum:

• Ron Virgin. Dark as the night and twice as long. This was almost black, and mixed well with any cola or ginger ale. Hell, it probably was good taken in shot form as well. At $7.90 a fifth, it was the equivalent of The Glen Livet for me.
  
• Sir Francis Drake. The cheapest piss-colored rum available in a handle form. For those of you who don't know what a handle is: A) kill yourself; and B) it's a 1.75 liter bottle. The big boy. The only problem? After a night of drinking it, you're insides feel like they have been rinsed with dirty dishwater. If you can't afford the $11.40 handle, then the fifth was $6.85 or something like that, and $7.43 with tax. Not that I remember or anything.
  
• The crown jewel of the cheap fifth, Mr. Boston. Mr. Boston and I go way back. At 5.90 a fifth, you can do no wrong with that gentleman. Sure, it was as bitter as swill. But it mixed well with coke. And the hangover was slightly less dirty than Sir Francis Drake.
  

The reason I digressed about glorious cheap rums was because Mr. Boston mixed very well with Pepsi Holiday Spice. So well, in fact, that I will probably never be able to drink Pepsi Holiday Spice (should it ever come back) again without tasting that fine, impure distillation of Mr. Boston's finest.

But now I have Cranberry Splash. And it is an enticing lover. She beckons me from grocery store shelves and convenience store coolers.

"Come. Taste me. I won't be around forever you know. Would you like me to put on my 2-liter dress for mixing? Or how about you and me take a car ride in my 20 oz. suit? Or we could spent an evening together, me in my 12 oz. cans and you drinking six or seven of me."

I could tell you that I'm flaccid now, but I would be lying.

My current favorite cocktail is Tito's Handmade Vodka mixed with Cranberry Splash. The last time I got rip-roaring drunk was a few Sundays ago while watching football.

I drank a fifth of Tito's along with a 2-liter of Cranberry Splash throughout the day. I remember the first half of the 1:00 games, and the bitter end of the night game.

And I did not piss all over myself. As far as you know.

So if you're in the Northern Virginia area, and you see that your local supermarket has been cleansed of all Cranberry Splash, I might have been there.

And if you slip on something that smells vaguely of bleach, then you know I have been there.

I apologize for nothing.

Hot chicks with foreign accents

It's time I let you people in on a little secret of mine. Though it fills me with great shame, I don't think my flaw is all that unique.

Hot chicks with foreign accents can make me do anything.

She could come up to me and say, "How about ve firebomb zat orphanage, yes?" and I would be mixing molotov cocktails so fast your head would spin.

So the following should come as no surprise.

I went to the mall the other day, the Saturday before Christmas. If you haven't done that before, you should just save yourself some time and give yourself a frontal lobotomy with a butter knife. It would probably be less painful.

The people that piss me off the most are the fuckers who poach parking spots. They follow you as you're walking out of the mall. They're trailing 50 feet behind you at all times, just waiting for you to click your keychain, and reveal to them the spot you are about to vacate.

God forbid that you would sit in your car for a second and go over your purchases, or put a CD in the player or anything like that. These pieces of shit are hovering, and some of them even have the nerve to honk at you to hurry up.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no limit to the amount of time you can park in a mall, as long as it's not overnight.

Once I find my vacant spot and pull in, an unwritten social contract is now in effect that states that I may have that spot until I want to leave, regardless of whether or not I am actually in the vehicle.

Say I'm wandering through Macy's doing my Christmas shopping (like I would ever do that, that place is expensive as balls), and as I'm passing through, I catch a lingerie poster.

Now I'm all hot and bothered, so I retreat back to my car to rub one out, so I can finish my shopping with a clear head. I should be able to do that in peace without a poacher sitting on my ass honking.

Believe you me, it's awful hard to climax when a horn is honking. I've done it, but the chafing lasted more than a week or two, I don't mind telling you.

Glorious masturbation aside, I hate going to the mall around this time of year. But I did it because I'm an idiot, and I haven't finished my shopping.

So I'm wandering through the mall, trying to make it to the bookstore and maybe the cigar shop for my brother (and myself), when this gorgeous chick with a foreign accent approaches me.

My first thought is that maybe she needs my help, maybe someone (Jason Bourne?) is after her? My second thought is, will she still bang me if I get severely beaten by whoever is chasing her?

Luckily it never came to that.

She asks me if I've got my Christmas shopping left. I reply in the affirmative.

Now, if she wasn't extremely gorgeous, rest assured I would have not responded politely, but probably something like, "No, I'm just in the mall because I hate myself, you skull-faced cunt!"

But she wasn't skull-faced in the least, and thought she probably was a cunt to some degree (they all are), she hadn't shown me that side of herself.

She asks me if I've got any ladies on the list left to shop for, and I reply with, "Oh yeah, lots of ladies. Lots of ladies to give presents to."

Idiot! I thought to myself. She's not going to take you in the stall of the men's room and have unprotected monkey sex with you if she thinks you're involved somehow.

So I mention something about needing to get my mom a gift.

And she immediately starts extolling the benefits of her hand lotion (yyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeaaaaahhh) and some stupid nail file that has three sides to make your nails the shiniest.

She even uses a sample nail thing to buff my right thumbnail. And no, she didn't notice my spontaneous orgasm. At least, she was professional enough to pretend not to notice.

Now, throughout this whole thing, I'm thinking: A) I wonder if the men's room stall would give us enough privacy; and B) How am I going to get out of this without money on anything but condoms and lube?

So she continues her spiel, and I find myself becoming increasingly horny and late, but she won't shut the fuck up. Granted, she still is gorgeous and still speaking in that hot accent, but it's slowly wearing off.

Finally a manage to get away from her, while only buying one nail lotion/file pack for $50. God, I hate myself.

I at least talked myself into the fact that I could give it to my mom, before I found out that my mom gets her nails done every few weeks, so she doesn't need that shit.

God damn you hot chicks with foreign accents. You'd think a pity blowjob in the bathroom would be in order once every now and again.

And if you're wondering if I have a public bathroom monkey sex fetish, you are correct.

So now my nails are always impeccably shiny, I am out $50, and I hate myself even more than usual.

Pretty standard pre-Christmas weekend actually.

Monday Links: 12/22

Back with your second helping on Monday Links!

And yes, I still haven't thought of a wittier title. Fuck my life.

• If you've done your holiday shopping, and didn't know about this then I hope you saved your receipts. All of them.
• It's a few years old, but this beer review is spot on. See links at the bottom of the page for even more beer-related skullduggery. (I'm not going to lie, I don't know what that word means. And I'll be damned if I'm going to look it up.)
• I don't think Michael Bay could get away with this in a movie. Just goes to show, reality is stranger than......something.
• Men. We are awesome, and we often say things that are awesome. Here is a list of awesome things great men have said in the past.
• Finally, with all the hubbub about global warming, this should at least get your attention that it might not be all it's cracked up to be.

A run in with charity

It's the holiday season, and you know what that means.

Those Salvation Army people incessantly ringing their bells are in front of the grocery stores, standing next to a red bucket filled with change.

I'm not opposed to donating to charitable paramilitary organizations, but as a twenty-something in the twenty-first century, I rarely have cash on me. So I usually do a despicable thing when I pass these people, I avoid eye-contact, and pretend to be talking on my cell phone. God, I hate myself.

But I was at the store today, and I found myself with six dollars (a five and a one) and several receipts in my wallet, and I figured I would toss a buck in the bucket.

At the very least, it would make me feel less guilty about masturbating later that night.

So I grab a bill, and walk to the front door of the supermarket. It's not until I'm about three steps away, that I realize that I've got the five in my hands. So I slow my pace, and have to dig through all of the old receipts to find my crumpled up one-dollar bill.

The guy with the bell was a small (as opposed to large?) Asian man. He was watching me the whole time, and probably knew exactly what I was doing. That I wasn't willing to give four extra valuable dollars to people less fortunate.

As I found the one and dropped it in, he gave me the most sarcastic, "Well, thank you" that I've ever heard.

But it doesn't end there, ladies and germs. No, this rollercoaster is just beginning. Well, not really. I'd say a little more than 40% done.

So I get my groceries, and I must have come to the store at an odd hour, because apparently there was a shift change, and a wiry bearded man wearing a Santa Claus hat was working the ol' bucket when I came out of the store.

I'll be god-damned if I was going to donate twice. But this guy looked at me even more condescendingly than the other guy as I walked out.

I still had the five, but if I wasn't going to give them five, I wasn't going to give them six dollars.

For some reason, I felt the need to explain my apparent selfishness.

"You know," I said, "I gave to the guy before you."

"Oh, I understand sir," the guy said.

I didn't like the tone in his voice. All condescending and shit. If I wanted to be lectured by some homo with a bell, I'd head to the annual "Faggots and the Bells They Ring" lecture series at Villanova.

"Seriously man, I gave twenty bucks (!) to the guy before you, it was all I had."

"It's no problem sir, you have a happy holiday."

So I decided a different tack. I decided to crack a joke, so maybe he wouldn't think I was scum. Maybe it's just a personality flaw I have, I don't like random bell-ringing homos to think I am scum. Weird.

"OK, I didn't donate before. I'm sorry, it's just that I want to make sure that my hard earned money won't go towards helping any dirty jews."

Well, that didn't go over as planned. Instead of the vacant, uncaring stare he had given me before, suddenly he stood six inches taller, and had a real fire in his eyes.

"Excuse me SIR, but I happen to be Jewish," he informed me.

I was absolutely stunned. Why didn't I pick up on this? He was a wiry, bearded man, like a stereotypical Jew. He was wearing corduroys and a brown sweater, and a.............Santa hat.

A Santa hat?

"You're not Jewish! Why are you wearing a Santa hat?" I yelled in his face, dismayed that he caused me a brief moment of shame.

"Well, the Salvation Army is associated with Christmas, so I wear it to help the cause," he told me, still visibly steamed.

"Oh, surprise, surprise! A Jew lying to get money! Way to not be a stereotype." I don't know where I lost control of the situation, but I think it was somewhere around here.

We argued for a few more minutes, him calling me rascist, and me saying that I thought he was just going to steal the money for himself, and quite a crowd had gathered around us.

My legal counsel has advised me to end this story here. Merry Christmas.