super brooklyn

My first full weekend in The City was essentially a series of happy surprises, like finding one of those freak two-in-one McNuggets in your combo meal, thus netting you 11 delicious, fried, all white meat chicken bitelets instead of the expected 10. And anyone who knows anything knows that unexpectedly free food is the greatest victories man can achieve over society next to letting out a silent but deadly in a crowded area and getting someone else blamed for it. A petty, but no less important, success story in life.

For starters, I'll set the stage that between the hours of 8:00am Friday and 1:30am Sunday morning, I spent a grand total of two hours in my abode in Brooklyn. Yeah, I am that cool and I want you to marvel at it. After a wonderful first week of work (sure, worthwhile tasks have yet to bubble up and break the the barrier formed by the mindless, tediously repetitive tasks I perform that lackadaisically congeal, like the skin that forms on the top of tapioca pudding left uncovered for too long, on the doldrums that was my job last week.) But it's actually not so bad. Somehow I manage to enter a Zen-like state when I'm working, and after I arrive, before I even know it, it's time to get lunch and then only a few more hours until it's time to punch out. I guess when you don't really have anything tangible to focus on at work, you don't focus on anything tangible which would lend itself to regular demarcations of time. But enough about work, because the good tales, lie elsewhere.

So after a few rounds of drinking before the sun went down, the Gods threw me a series of events which could only happen when you start drinking before the sun goes down. Down at The Patriot (Church and Chambers for those curious) I wandered myself outside after a few mugs of $6 pitchers to smoke a cigarette. This absolutely hammered guy wanders out to do the same (I know how everyone says that smoking will kill you, but at the same time, people who don't smoke are missing out on a certain demographic of society that is hilarious to interact with). Anyway, I quickly find out that this guy is Irish, largely because of his accent, which provided a real hurdle in our conversation, as not only was his accent thicker than booty the heart of Harlem, but he was absolutely hammered... and I'm talking European hammered, which is a whole ethos of hammered in and of itself.

In the span of less than 10 minutes (or however long it took me to smoke my cigarette) these are the subjects we covered, largely in chronological order (note: anything in quotes is something he said, which must be read in an gregariously heavy Irish accent out loud in are in a dense public area. If you are not in a dense public area, write these down and save them for later. The goal of this exercise is, hopefully, to offend someone around you): "I like your shirt. You have nice eyes. I'M NOT GAY! Are you gay!?!" Our respective paths in life (he studied to be a veterinarian... been doing it for 20 years... hates his life). Identifying types of cars that drove by. The finer points of Bob Dylan's musical stylings and why rap is the worst noise ever produced (specifically the flow of acclaimed rapper 50 Cent). How a man stands and walks. After finishing my smoke and trying to get inside, he grabs me right after we walk in the door and pulls me up to a table of women sitting just inside. "I don't know these people... which one do you want?" he sloshes out of his mouth, with a gleam of hope that we can tag team this table and come away with some spoils. While his attention was diverted, I managed to slide my way past his fermenting impulses and wish him a good night. Later, I saw him slouched over another table reading palms and buying rounds. It was only at this point I realized the true utility hidden, like the DuckTales toy in a box of Froot Loops, within this man and wished I had stuck through the ramblings of a drunkard. I could have had some free beer at the end of that story.

Prior to that, however, was a moment which will stay with me forever. But not in that touching, "Lifetime: television for women" kinda way, but more in that "voodoo curse the village shaman in Equatorial Guinea hexed you with because you swallowed the snake lungs before Chief Melumbo did" kinda way. And it was not so cool, because it was an unfortunate surprise, and that is just uncalled for. One of the bartenders came over and asked us if we wanted a free shot. Of course we did. What a redundant question. That's like asking "do want to not get strangled today?" Useless. So we make out way to the bar to pick up our shots. But, like soothing song from a Jack-in-the-Box, behind there lurked a creepy clown waiting at the most inopportune time to jump out and scare the crap out of us. As we raise our glasses, the bartender screams out, "Hey, check out these!" and breaks the emergency glass on her bra and reveals to us her chest. Now, I'm sure most of you out there, guys and girls alike will say "DUDE! FREE BOOBS!" (or, if you play Warcraft, "d00d, fr33 b00b5"). But let me just say, in my own defense of how much more horrifying this was than a double feature marathon of "Gigli" and "Glitter" on TBS, this woman must have been at least 40 but was faker than a Gucci in Chinatown. It was nothing worth seeing, although I do wish I could have a split screen view of all of our faces right at the moment she revealed her baby feeders. Because I'm sure our faces were well worth the price of admission, and then some.

Surprisingly, only a few stories from Friday night have eclipsed the time I have for this post tonight. I'm trying to keep my posts closer to the "party anecdote" side in length rather than a full length performance of Shakespeare's Henry VI. But fret not, my Gobstoppers. I've started a running list of things that, like my signature on that menstruating cunt's divorce papers, I need to get down on paper as fast as possible. But until such a day.

neck face on a brooklyn roof...