4 Days of Thanksgiving

Monday, November 27, 2006

4 Days of Thanksgiving Current mood: full So wow, do I have a lot to be thankful for! I have so much to be thankful for that last week, I not only had one amazing Thanksgiving dinner, I had four! And a birthday dinner for my sister to top it off. Here's the breakdown of one of the best food weeks ever.... Night: Tuesday Location: 18th and Noe, San Francisco Hosts: Tamara/Aliza Company: Tamara, Alize, Christina, Carolina, Kat-tastic, Zena, Tiffany, Carly, Jackie, Bryona, myself +6-8 others (I can't remember 14 new names all in the same evening!) Chef: Chef Sexy Menu: Turkey, homemade stuffing, carrot mashers, mashed potatoes, gravy, orange-cranberry sauce, salad w/lettuce, candied walnuts, feta cheese. Night: Wednesday Location: 617 Marseille, Half Moon Bay Hosts: Brett and Kathleen Company: Dad, Kathleen, Nick, Kelsey, me. Chef: Dad of course! Menu: Butternut squash soup w/crab meat, potato casserole w/gargonzola cheese, steak. Night: Thursday Location: 2150 St. Andrews, Half Moon Bay Hosts: Patrick and Mom Company: Mom, Patrick, Kelsey, Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Sue, Emily, Sean, myself. Chef: Patrick, Mom Menu: Turkey, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, ham rolls, carmelized brie, green beans, stuffing, ice cream, pumpkin pie. Night: Friday Location: 626 Occidental, San Mateo Hosts: The Feinns Company: Phillip, Cameron, Joe, Sandy, Sandie, Patrick, Jessie, Charles, Derek P., Emily, Sean, Kelsey, myself Chef: Cameron and Phillip Menu: Crab, guacamole (appetizers), Butternut squash soup, baked potatoes, prime rib, pumpkin pie, chocolate pecan pie. Night: Saturday Location: House of Prime Rib, Van Ness, San Francisco Hosts: Patrick and Mom Company: Patrick, Mom, Emily, Sean, Kelsey, Jessie, myself (Happy Birthday Emily!!) Chef: House of Prime Rib of course! Menu: salad, yorkshire pudding, creamed spinach, mashed potatoes, prime rib. Now if that's not a week of eating to be thankful for, I don't know what is! Thank you to all the hosts and chefs that made my Thanksgiving not a day but a week!

12 Hours of Drinking

Monday, November 20, 2006

12 Hours of Drinking Current mood: drunk That's right. You read that correctly. I'm going to tell you about the day that I almost died. Ok. That's an exaggeration, surely. But I don't know that I've ever been through a day that felt longer. Let me first tell you about my wingman in this endeavor. Derek is a good soul. He's a decent sort of person. He's also single by circumstance and therefore an excellent addition to any drunken outing. When I pick him up at about 1:30 on Saturday, I tell him that we're not only going to play Pub Golf for Alli's birthday, but that we need to keep ourselves coherent and awake enough to make it to Bubble Lounge for Katie Buckstein's birthday afterwards. We agree that this will require food at various points, water and a healthy amount of shit talking each other to stay on track. We begin at 2. I earn the nickname Dust for being swept in 5 straight games of Beirut by Derek (let's not forget, he owns a table!)...Those beers help, as I'm still reeling from the night before and the mind erasers that totalled me then. By the time we make it to the first bar, Bar None, I'm starting to feel my normal self again. For those of you who don't know about golf, it goes like this....you pick a certain number of bars and create a par drink amount for each. On this particular course, 2 drinks was par for every bar. You mark on your scorecard the number of drinks you have at each place, and if you have more than 2, that's worth a stroke, more than 3 another stroke, etc. The person who ends with the most drinks dies. Er, wins. When we cruise in, you can tell who's golfing. You've never seen so many people wearing hats, plaid, knee socks and putting gloves in your entire life. Actually, I'm full of lies today...how about saying that you've never seen so much of the above when not on an actual golf course? Pitchers of beer are on the order, and imagine my surprise when I'm confronted by two guys who know me as "Adam, Kelsey's brother from Half Moon Bay." Definitely not what I'm expecting to hear in the marina. Now, we got there late, which means that we have only a certain amount of time to catch up before the referree blows the whistle and it's time to move on. I start chugging beer. For those of you that know my predicament, and the fact that I still don't physically know how to make myself burp, this can become a problem. But the whistle blows and on the walk to the door, I kill the second beer for the hole, walk outside into the light of day (even when you know it's day time, walking out of a bar and being hit with sunlight is still a bit disconcerting) and spend the next two blocks fighting the need to throw up. Derek tries to talk to me. Sean tries to talk to me. Julian tries to talk to me. The most I get out is a grimace, a very pained expression, and I manage to spit bile onto the sidewalk. I do this for three blocks, and then, amazingly, and thankfully, the feeling passes. I bounce up and down for a minute in celebration, and find myself dumped with the rest of the golfers into City Tavern. It's bad when bartenders know you. It's even worse when they take it upon themselves to make you more drunk. This is what happens to us throughout the USC v. Cal game. Mind erasers, beer, shots, they keep coming, and our group grows steadily less manageable. The game's on and the dichotomy between the SC and the Cal fans in the bar grows. Derek feeds me water. It's time to eat, but I can't leave the football game, so I stand outside and do only the second dumbest thing I could do, right there behind drinking more....I smoke a joint. Sure, it tastes good, and almost rights the ship for me, and then I realize that it's made me fucking high and I'm in a lot of trouble because there's no way I can finish golfing now. Derek returns from KFC/Taco Bell and hands me some sort of chicken wrap. I don't bother to go back in the bar, instead opting for the always popular street eat. At this point, the game ends with SC asserting their rightful place at the top of the Pac10 food chain, the whistle blows and it's time to go to KTs. We make it across the street where the atmosphere is much more dancy. The group, hearing the music and sensing new blood, gets rowdy. It's at this point that we lose Julian....in a bid to make him the undisputed golf champion, he takes several shots to cement his victory. He earns the medal and wears it around his neck for the rest of the evening, which for him, ends up being short. He takes us to some place called Andole's, which I couldn't find right now if you dropped me off in the Marina with an address and a map, to meet up with Brigid and Christina. We're drunk, we've been smoking, and Brigid and Christina immediately hate all three of us. I decide a long island would be a great idea, and then have a hard time understanding why a guy standing in front of a full bar says that they can't make long islands. I'm a little confused, so Derek gets us Coronas to go with the steak quesadillas. Julian gets watermelon juice, which he doesn't really get the chance to enjoy because he's in the bathroom throwing up the victory shots he put down at KTs. Brigid and Christina leave us without a goodbye. I guess at that point we either don't deserve it or they figure it's a waste of their time cause we won't remember it anyways. And now, comes the push. At this point, we're working up to about 9 o'clock and it's gut check time. Either we come up with the final move to Bubble Lounge, or we end the night as dead weight on the couch. We get to Julian's, and he's in bed and asleep before I make it to the bathroom. At this point, Derek and I rally. It's amazing. We get a game of Beirut going and by the time Charles picks us up, the second wind is upon us and we're ready. We get to Bubble Lounge as by far the drunkest people in the room. I don't remember a whole lot other than smoking a joint on their smoking patio, talking to many people (I remember the people, but not the conversations), and being flirted with by Katie's mom. I'm told the next day by Charles that I pretty much sat down in Jess Goldman's lap, continued telling people, "fuck you, pay me," and that the only consolation prize for me was that Derek was more drunk than I was. Honestly, Bubble Lounge is like Andole's for me...I couldn't find it again if you paid me. By the time Charles drops me back off at Julian's, it's all I can do to get back on the couch, and it's been just shy of 12 hours since Derek and I started the first game of Beirut. Waking up on Sunday, drinking water was the best feeling ever, simply because it was a beverage that didn't have any alcohol content. Now to prepare for Thanksgiving weekend and a football game. Cheers all.

Visualize Vivid Verbplay in My Vortex

Friday, November 17, 2006

Visualize Vivid Verbplay in my Vortex Current mood: high That's right, that's everyone's funkiest homosapien, Mr. Del. Last night, Alan, Derek, Victor, Sutton and myself had the pleasure of visiting the Fillmore to see the most legendary of the Hiero crew come to spit. Evening starts when we pick up Sutton and his bag of goodies way up on Market. Cruise to Vic's place where I can tell it's gonna be an early night...he's already on the couch two blunts deep, lights dimmed, watching some history channel bullshit. We get him to raise the lights (ruining the romance for him), turn on some music and I find a basketball game on tv. Sutton realizes he still doesn't have a ticket, so we pile out and head to the show, at which point I finish the 40 I was working on. Mickey's does me in once more. We get to the show and Sutton gets his ticket right there, no sell out crowd here. Which is actually disappointing, because as we go inside to the sounds of Motion Man (think Pablito's Way) the place is pretty empty and the crowd is almost all white. Definitely not what I was expecting. Motion Man finishes up and out comes some chick I hadn't heard of before...Song 1. She's dope. Real fast over the beats, coherent, solid. She gives way to Mike Realm who rips off a fantastic set on the 1s and 2s, using the same video scratching technique employed by Cut Chemist (see my blog "When Chemistry Cuts" for a description), using clips from various movies including the "O Face" scene from Office Space. And then comes the man. Decked out in a pair of tie up slipper type shoes, white pants, a light lime green polo shirt and a sick fedora style hat that's a white base with spiraling lines of black, green and white. Very sick. He comes out much less inebriated than I had anticipated. In fact, I'd almost say at this point in the evening that he's actually the closest to sober that I've ever seen him. Don't get me wrong, this changes throughout the course of the show, but for an opening song, I hadn't seen him that lucid in a bit. He comes out and rips a set. It's got solid freestyles throughout, and some old and new favorites. He starts it off with the perennial classic At the Helm off Third Eye Vision. When this ends he goes straight into the Virus cut off the Deltron cd which he parlays into the heavy violin sound of my all time favorite Del song, Catch a Bad One. But the hits don't stop there. Phoney Franchise is next, and at this point, the blunts and Heinekens have come out and I start to get the feeling that our time left with Mr. Sapien is dwindling with every puff or sip. Powers That Be comes next (with A Plus backing him) and then they go into the Souls song Make Your Mind Up which they follow with a new APlus song off his new album. At this point, Del goes into the usual selling of product by announcing the his new album (long awaited, I might add) is dropping soon and will be called 11th Hour. Now, the last two times I've seen Hiero, he's been talking about this same album, so I have to assume a) not only will it be out soonish, but b) if Del's taking this long to work on it, it oughta be pretty fucking hot. Then they play a few I hadn't heard before, We are the Funky Homo Sapiens, and some song called Thank You bookend the popular Mr. Dobalina. At this point, we're into the encore part of the show, and Del's really letting loose on the freestyles, my guess is because he's tossed. His hat comes down lower over his eyes, his cadence quicker and a bit more slurred, and he's paying less attention to moving the show along and more to spitting. He freestyles over the beat from Dead Prez's Bigger Than Hip Hop and then goes into another new song called Foot Down. He flows one more time before breaking out my Dad's favorite, If You Must. Personally, I hate that song. Anyone who has breath so bad it melts ice cream is not something I want to hear about. Finally, he closes out the set with a bang. You Never Knew and the Gorillaz' Clint Eastwood. Fucking sick. We get another half hour of show after that, but it's just the DJ and Del partying with the audience...at that point, he's trashed and done rapping. But, he was and continues to be, Del the Funky Homosapien.

The Weekender Chico, and Everything In It

Monday, November 06, 2006

The Weekender Chico, and Everything In It Current mood: okay You always know it's gonna be a good weekend when USC students bombard San Francisco to bring their own special brand of mayhem with them to play Stanford. However, it's an even different sort of weekend when UCLA students need to come up here to watch their team get kicked around by Cal as well. My weekend starts Friday night. Julia Yates, Anthony Jenkins and myself go out dancing at this place called Mr. Smith's. Hadn't been there before, but what a weird layout. VIP on the top floor, bar on the entry floor and the dance floor in the basement? It kinda fragmented the entire thing, split up the crowd and left the dance floor basically for the three of us plus a few other randoms. As Julia is my DD for the evening, I make ample use by getting trashed. I don't really remember being dropped off at home, but wake up on Saturday morning feeling suprisingly well. I immediately throw this good feeling in the garbage can by meeting up with the 2801 Ellendale crew at the Stanford v. USC game where there are two kegs and vicious games of flip cup going on. Our team mounts up for the first game, and we get slaughtered by the women's soccer team we all know and love. They talk shit. Then they talk more shit. Then the team after us waxes them, giving us another chance on the table. It was not a chance we were about to throw away. We beat that team up. Then the girls get back on the table, we take them out too. Long story short, we win 5 games of flip cup in a row, an unprecedented showing. We wander to the game where we watch USC kick the living shit out of Stanford 42-0. I leave the game content, a little faded, and ready for Saturday night. (Now, there's a little bitterness coming here, so if that makes you uncomfortable, or you just don't want to read it, skip ahead to the **** at the end of the section....If you want to know how I'm really feeling, read on.) ******************************************* Now, I've gone to great lengths to stay positive, stay happy, and stay unaffected following my break up. I've also tried very hard to stay as un-bitter as humanly possible, and keep the majority of my thoughts and feelings on the subject (and her), especially the negative ones, to myself. I will only say here that for two and a half years of that relationship, I tried everything I could think of to get her to go and experience a football game with me. Free tickets, requests, begging, bribing, everything. Never worked. So it got under my collar upon returning home to find out that on this weekend, not only did she go to a football game, but she didn't even go to her own football game in Berkeley. No, she went to the SC game. Not only did I want to throw my computer off the balcony, but I seriously considered about 100 other things that I could do that would not only have been stupid, but extremely unproductive as well. I find it only stupid and retarded on my part that I let stuff like this get to me. And really, in the end, I know it only hurts me, which makes it even more stupid. I'm working on that, but haven't completely found the ground I need to stand on yet. Enough of that. I'm done. *********************************************** I cruise up with Charles to Mike and Julian's, where Mike has once again been castrated (and probably for good purpose) by Sonya, and Julian, Charles, Derek and myself are ready to go out. We hit City Tavern, where I must say, Julian's connections work wonders. We skip the line at the door, get to the bar quick and get some strong ass drinks. Charles then spends the evening attempting to repay me for hazing him on Halloween by ordering me a Mind Eraser and telling me after I've pounded it and feel like vomiting on his shirt that it was in fact a double. These are the types of friends I have. And you know what? I wouldn't have it any other way. He drives us home, drops us off and after some fun, I pass out. Hard. I wake up and remember, shit, it's 49ers game day!!!! I eat a special treat from the club, meet up with my grandparents and Patrick (let me tell you, most non-exciting tailgate ever, but it made the grandparents happy)...we have some wine, eat some lox and lobster. I can't tell you how amusing to me the difference between the SC tailgate and the 49er tailgate was. One was keg beer, flip cup and some chips if you were lucky, the second was luxury box style. And, the Niners won!!!! 9-3. Amazing. Not like Sunday night needs any treatment here...y'all know what goes down then. New Wire, new Dexter, and then I passed out before I could finish Desperate Housewives. The world, chico, and everything in it.

Can I Get a Bullet with That Pretzel?

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Can I Get a Bullet with that Pretzel? Current mood: jubilant The evening starts when I invite Nick, my 17 (almost 18) year old step brother to join Cella, Julian, Charles and I for Halloween in the city. Jordan Harbind meets us as we're getting ready. Nick hasn't partied up there before, and Castro seems like an excellent introduction. I stop by the club on my way to King street and get introduced to what the guys there call racing the cheetah. I've been high in my life. But racing the cheetah? Yea, don't try it unless you want to be stuck in the clouds for a few hours. It's a bong load that has some weed on the bottom (they used ATF), bubble hash on top of that, topped off with Trainwreck keefe. Now multiply that by two monster rips, and you see how my evening kicked off. We get to 255 King and get into several heated games of Beirut. Believe it or not, Charles and I spend 4 or 5 games mopping the floor with various competitors, which ends up turning Julian into a rageaholic. Once our liquid blankets are in place, and our costumes fitted (imagine 5 backpack wearing, bible toting Mormons), we head out, grabbing a cab and getting dropped off outside one of the pedestrian zones at the Castro. We walk in and no one is impressed. I tell them to wait for it. "Dude, there's no one here" Hello, we're not even on Market yet! And then it hits, the throngs. On a quick sidenote...I haven't seen a costume draw as much attention as the Mormon costume. Now, if you had one or even two, it's easy to lose the costume in a crowd. But with 5 of us, we stand out to everyone walking past and get some of the following comments: "Mormons!!!! Yaaaaay Mormons!!!!" - hot chick ..1 "Oh wow, what an awesome costume. Go Mormons!!!" - hot chick ..2 "Fucking Mormons suck!" - meathead ..1 "I'm gonna kick your religious ass" - meathead ..2 "If you guys aren't Mormon, that costume is soooo wrong." - girl in the street and finally, my favorite, from about 1 out of every 4 people we ran into..... "Are you guys really Mormons?" The throng hits us and we start walking, looking for a little space, but mainly just sinking into the masses. I happen to love it. In any street carnival, fair, public mass of people, the feeling of anonymity that comes with the masses is always welcomed and embraced by me. At this point, Charles decides he needs to piss. I see a pretzel/churro stand. Excellent, a pretzel and a churro for 5 dollars. One combo, please. She hands me the pretzel, and as she does so, and I survey the scene for my fellow Mormons and revelers, and then the shots ring out. 4 or 5 of them, rapid, which I'm torn between thinking are real gun shots and perhaps fireworks? But they're loud, and about twenty feet from the pretzel stand I'm at, people scatter from what's obviously the epicenter of the shots. One girl comes out with blood on her face, to which Nick states, "shit, she's got blood on her face!" and one guy ends up on the ground with what appears to be a bullet in his leg. Meanwhile, as everyone is running around and I'm watching this, I think, "this is really stupid people. There's not gonna be MORE gunshots, and it's not like once you've heard them you can get out of the way. You're not faster than a speeding bullet, so stay where you are and don't get swept up in the pandemonium. People look at me like I'm nuts for standing and watching. I realize at this point that I've got the pretzel, which I've taken a few bites of and is rather bland, but there's no churro. And there's no pretzel lady to be seen. Literally, the gunshots rang out and she disappeared. I look around some more, generally upset that I don't get some cinnamon goodness to go with my bland ass pretzel and see her cowering behind the cart. At this point, me, caring man of the people that I am, looks down at her shaking behind her cart..."um, could I get that churro now?" The look of fear, bewilderment and downright astonishment on her face that I could even think of eating, let alone asking her to serve me at a time like this makes me feel a little funny for not being as scared as she is. But like I said, once you've heard the shots, you're not gonna dodge the bullets, so might as well stay in one place (that's what my mom told me to do when I got lost as a child). She shakily gets up and hands me the churro, looking at me with disgust for my selfish "feed me" attitude. Then, I figure, why not. "Excuse me, could I get some salt on this pretzel?" (honestly, when I ordered the pretzel, I didn't think I'd have to order salt extra.) She shakes her head at me, looks at me once more like I've fallen out of a tree and goes, "you already took a bite, I can't put salt on it now" and gives me two or three more shakes of the head. At this point, the place has started swarming with cops trying to contain the scene and figure out who shot who. It's probably a good time to leave, but Nick is with us, so where does one take an underage high school senior in the city? We decide that if ever there's a time to test our mettle and love at City Tavern, this here is the night. We cab it over to the Marina, thinking of ways to get Jordan's ID out to Nick. All of this becomes a moot issue when we find out that no one at City is carding and he walks in the front door. Of course, with all of us dressed as Mormons, he blends right in, and with Julian and I ordering the drinks, no one even thinks to look at him like he's too young. Nick, my stepbrother, let me introduce you to the Mind Eraser. Kahlua, Vodka, club soda, chugged through a straw. Well, apparently, after all this, Julian, who didn't join us in the Castro, and Mike have wandered outside and unbeknownst to any of us, almost gotten into a fight with some juiced up adrenaline freak wearing a shirt that says, "fuck you, pay me." And he's ready. Julian's ready. Mike's trying to avoid everything and I get to walk right into the middle and this guy starts screaming at me. Finally, his friends and our muted response get him to calm down a little. He says one more thing, and Nick, who has no idea what a street fight is really like with 20 something boozed up meatheads, starts talking back. This of course gets dumbass all riled up again and he starts really jawing with Nick. After yelling at him to shut the fuck up and get back, I finally get Nick to listen and we diffuse the situation. This guy probably would have mauled Nick and not thought twice about it, but for the rest of the evening I get to hear how Nick "would've kicked that fucker's ass," no matter how many times I explain to him that he would have been in a hospital. And then, that's that. Cab back to 255 King, I throw Charles and Nick in my car as Jordan is throwing up in Julian's bathroom (he also spent almost the entire time we were at City Tavern in the bathroom, alternating between standing up against the wall of the stall and throwing up), Jack in the Box after being turned away from In-N-Out, and home. Halloween. Castro. San Francisco. These are words that will live in infamy. Check back for pictures of the Mormon crew.