It's my birthday! Yes! I haven't cried yet today, so this is obviously going to be one of the good birthdays, rather than the soul-searching what am I doing with my life birthdays. So that's nice. Liz wrote me a little birthday guest blog, I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I did:
On March 9th 2010, I really let Ms. Wrong down. I’ve let her down more times than I can count. Every time I’ve declined to swill tequila shots, or turned up my nose at some libation she gets this dejected look as if I’ve kicked her dog . When I can’t make it to an event because of a prior engagement it's like I let it spill that Santa was a pedophile. And when I didn’t save her a piece of chicken-pot-pie from a potluck she was delayed in arriving to, well that was the equivalent of sticking coal in her stocking. All of those failures on my part pale in comparison to her birthday last year, when I went home early for no better reason than the fact that I was “tired”.
Tired? For God’s sake I was just 26 years old, did I think it was going to get easier as I got older? Did I think that for some reason simply having a job that started early in the morning should make me exempt from drinking recklessly with one of my best friends? How could I be so deluded with the imagined importance of my “career” as a low-level manager, to think that it would really harm me if I had to drink a few extra cups of coffee in the morning to seem chipper at the 7:30 meeting? And a better question, when on earth did I get to be such an old sandy vagina with such pathetic excuses? I disgust myself. So, upon hearing the words, “I think I’m going to bail”, I was surprised to see Ms. Wrong take the news so stoically. In fact, I was so surprised, I asked again, "are you sure?". She told me again that it was fine, but I know, because of the subsequent times that she has mentioned it over the past year, not with judgment, but with sadness, that a little part of her soul died that night, along with a little bit of her youth.
Well, that it won't happen this year. In fact, I started pre-hydrating for this evening four days in advance. I'm going to go out, I am not going to look at my watch, I will shimmy, and swill, and make merry, and I will like it. I will fucking love it in fact. But really, how could I not love every opportunity I have to celebrate such a dear, unique and wonderful friend on her birthday? I've even look forward to buying her a diet coke, and listening her moan as she laments the fun we had.
P.S. I also hope all my Portland friends will be at the Standard tonight to see Liz in action. It should be pretty good.
Showing posts with label Guests. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guests. Show all posts
March 9, 2011
October 28, 2010
Guest Blog: How to Ruin Halloween
Yay! I love guest blogs. Here is Elizabeth's take on Halloween and her own mortality.
I love Halloween. I love costumes, and dancing, and fall, and pumpkins. I love that prudish girls become slutty referees, nurses, and Dorothys. I love scaring children when they come to the door, body paint, eating candy, fog machines, and lasers. I love fake blood, fake swords, haunted houses, fake spiders, and hay rides. I even love the way the rotting leaves smell while I dance the Monster Mash.
What I do NOT love are doctors. Latrophobia is, as far as I’m concerned, one of the most rational fears that modern man has to deal with. When you go to the doctor with any type of symptom, there is only one thing that he or she can relay, which is that there is something wrong with you. Either they have reasonable empirical evidence that there is a disease, break, disorder, wound, condition, infection, mutation or detrimental lifestyle habit, or there is nothing medically wrong, and you have to continue to live with the symptom while knowing they think you’ve made it up. In addition, the only person who can say with any authority that your life is about to end is someone with a medical license. Considering my eternal demise is also one of my least favorite things. I tend to believe that all those people who have come to terms with death haven’t really grasped the gravity of the end of their existence.
Needless to say, going to the doctor is extremely low on my list of priorities. I typically go only if there is no other way I can avoid it. When I have to go, I will hyperventilate for several days preceding the event while I think of ways to tell my family that I do in fact have a chronic disease that is very painful and will soon kill me. Depending on severity of the issue and the amount of time I have between scheduling and execution, I may break into hives, have a spike in my diastolic blood pressure, and/or cry until my face looks like Rhianna’s at the end of her relationship with Chris Brown.
Long story short, I thought the doctor couldn’t get much worse, but on my recent visit I found that to be false. My doctor came into my room and introduced himself with a smile. He apologized for being late, and was still wearing his scrubs from the surgery that he had just completed. He had me lay back on the table while I was violated with cold metal instruments more appropriate for an alien abduction than a Tuesday afternoon. As I stared at the ceiling during my probing, there was only one thing to look at . . . . the bloody skeleton doctor seen in this photo. All I could think was, “How could you ruin Halloween too?”
I love Halloween. I love costumes, and dancing, and fall, and pumpkins. I love that prudish girls become slutty referees, nurses, and Dorothys. I love scaring children when they come to the door, body paint, eating candy, fog machines, and lasers. I love fake blood, fake swords, haunted houses, fake spiders, and hay rides. I even love the way the rotting leaves smell while I dance the Monster Mash.
What I do NOT love are doctors. Latrophobia is, as far as I’m concerned, one of the most rational fears that modern man has to deal with. When you go to the doctor with any type of symptom, there is only one thing that he or she can relay, which is that there is something wrong with you. Either they have reasonable empirical evidence that there is a disease, break, disorder, wound, condition, infection, mutation or detrimental lifestyle habit, or there is nothing medically wrong, and you have to continue to live with the symptom while knowing they think you’ve made it up. In addition, the only person who can say with any authority that your life is about to end is someone with a medical license. Considering my eternal demise is also one of my least favorite things. I tend to believe that all those people who have come to terms with death haven’t really grasped the gravity of the end of their existence.
Needless to say, going to the doctor is extremely low on my list of priorities. I typically go only if there is no other way I can avoid it. When I have to go, I will hyperventilate for several days preceding the event while I think of ways to tell my family that I do in fact have a chronic disease that is very painful and will soon kill me. Depending on severity of the issue and the amount of time I have between scheduling and execution, I may break into hives, have a spike in my diastolic blood pressure, and/or cry until my face looks like Rhianna’s at the end of her relationship with Chris Brown.
Long story short, I thought the doctor couldn’t get much worse, but on my recent visit I found that to be false. My doctor came into my room and introduced himself with a smile. He apologized for being late, and was still wearing his scrubs from the surgery that he had just completed. He had me lay back on the table while I was violated with cold metal instruments more appropriate for an alien abduction than a Tuesday afternoon. As I stared at the ceiling during my probing, there was only one thing to look at . . . . the bloody skeleton doctor seen in this photo. All I could think was, “How could you ruin Halloween too?”
August 13, 2010
Guest Blog: Kisses
This is a guest blog from Mysterious Tony. He recently left Portland and all its glories to live in his brother's place in Brooklyn and get drunk every morning. I asked him what he missed about Portland. This apparently inspired a rant on the thing he despises most about NYC. This Seinfield clip sums it up.
Meeting new people isn’t easy. And I hate it. There’s on-the-spot facial memorization, impromptu topic conversation, and becoming acutely aware of pastry crumbs nestled in my beard, teeth and clothing, which must then be promptly removed. I usually fail two of these three tasks, and my only success is due to the constant examination of my visage to make sure I do not yet have a double chin. On the rare occasion that I successfully pass all three, I would normally immediately leave the situation and go home satisfied with my social prowess. That worked quite well in Portland, especially as an excuse for a self-congratulating fourth meal; some poutine, machaca burrito, or other fine delicacy from Cart-World on Hawthorne.* However, here in NYC, I don’t have a home to go to, and I am continually thrust into new conversations far too often for my liking.
To my dismay, this has become more problematic in recent weeks. Despite my low success rate, I have accumulated enough acquaintances to encounter the second greeting. In NYC, once the the first meeting has been bridged, additional meetings provide the opportunity to kiss on the cheek. THIS IS NOT OK WITH ME. The first time it happened, I was so taken aback I gasped audibly, and the kiss-giver asked if I might be choking on something. The second time, I ducked and she ended up kissing my forehead like she was my mother sending me off to kindergarten. This was becoming a problem I could not ignore. Strangers whose names I cannot remember are running around with a license to touch their lips to my face, and this bothers me so much that I have concluded that I am pretty much a prude. As a male, I'm quite disappointed to realize this, but I suppose there are worse things to discover, like bed bugs or your bicycle stolen.
Sadly, it looks like at least one of those things is becoming endemic to Portland. First it was headbands, now it's the bedbugs. It is only a matter of time until my beloved Portland becomes overrun with kiss-hellos from NYC and I am powerless to stop it. I guess it is time to just let the double chin grow in and leave the pastry crumbs on my face to deter the kissing. Besides, let’s face it: there was a pretty good chance I’d never be kissed again anyways.
* Editor's Note: Mysterious Tony lived dangerously close to Cart-World when he was still a Portlander. Now he is in city limbo.
Meeting new people isn’t easy. And I hate it. There’s on-the-spot facial memorization, impromptu topic conversation, and becoming acutely aware of pastry crumbs nestled in my beard, teeth and clothing, which must then be promptly removed. I usually fail two of these three tasks, and my only success is due to the constant examination of my visage to make sure I do not yet have a double chin. On the rare occasion that I successfully pass all three, I would normally immediately leave the situation and go home satisfied with my social prowess. That worked quite well in Portland, especially as an excuse for a self-congratulating fourth meal; some poutine, machaca burrito, or other fine delicacy from Cart-World on Hawthorne.* However, here in NYC, I don’t have a home to go to, and I am continually thrust into new conversations far too often for my liking.
To my dismay, this has become more problematic in recent weeks. Despite my low success rate, I have accumulated enough acquaintances to encounter the second greeting. In NYC, once the the first meeting has been bridged, additional meetings provide the opportunity to kiss on the cheek. THIS IS NOT OK WITH ME. The first time it happened, I was so taken aback I gasped audibly, and the kiss-giver asked if I might be choking on something. The second time, I ducked and she ended up kissing my forehead like she was my mother sending me off to kindergarten. This was becoming a problem I could not ignore. Strangers whose names I cannot remember are running around with a license to touch their lips to my face, and this bothers me so much that I have concluded that I am pretty much a prude. As a male, I'm quite disappointed to realize this, but I suppose there are worse things to discover, like bed bugs or your bicycle stolen.
Sadly, it looks like at least one of those things is becoming endemic to Portland. First it was headbands, now it's the bedbugs. It is only a matter of time until my beloved Portland becomes overrun with kiss-hellos from NYC and I am powerless to stop it. I guess it is time to just let the double chin grow in and leave the pastry crumbs on my face to deter the kissing. Besides, let’s face it: there was a pretty good chance I’d never be kissed again anyways.
* Editor's Note: Mysterious Tony lived dangerously close to Cart-World when he was still a Portlander. Now he is in city limbo.
May 19, 2010
Alcoholism for the Unemployed
A guest-blog entry by Kyle ArthurRachel asked me to do this guest blog weeks ago and because I am currently unemployed and have a wide open schedule, I put off writing the entry until just now. Being unemployed makes for some interesting choices on how I am going to spend what little money I do have on goods and services. Nine times out of ten I spend my money on booze, food, entertainment, and booze. So Rachel thought it would be a good idea if I wrote out a little guide to boozing and dining while strapped for cash; here are a few of my favorite locations and suggestions to stretch those government employment compensation checks.
$2 Tuesdays at Eastburn (1800 E Burnside St.): Every beer on tap is $2 all day, and these are not just the Miller Lites and Budweisers. The Eastburn taps are some of the best taps around if you like good local IPAs, Porters, Belgians, Stouts, etc and the best part is they change the taps up on a weekly basis. Eastburn has a great back patio, a more traditional seating area upstairs, and a crowded bar downstairs with more taps than above. The best part of downstairs area is the twenty-five cent Skee-Ball games. One thing of note for this night is to get there before the 8pm cover charge ($5), that is two and a half beers already wasted if you get there late.
Thirsty Thursdays @ PGE Park: This is the last year you will be able to go to PGE Park and watch either a Beavers (baseball) or a Timbers (soccer, before they go major league). Usually the high cost of beer, and the fact that you may be watching a baseball game, deter me from ever going on a regular day. But thank god for Thursday and their Miller $2 beer night (limit 2 per visit to the bar), I highly suggest drinking one or two just off to the side of the bar, then getting another two before proceeding back to your seats. On a beautiful Oregon summer evening watching a soccer game (or tolerating baseball) with cheap drinks in hand and yelling at the opposing team is just what you are meant to be doing with your time.
Matador (1967 W Burnside St.): Two blocks from my house and it serves $6 pitchers of Pabst everyday and their shots and mixed drinks have very generous pours. This entry really should just be called your local; everyone has a nice dive to go to every once in awhile. Search your area, and I suggest calling a few friends to make the rounds with you. *cough* me *cough*
King Burrito (2924 N Lombard St.): And last, but not least, one of my favorite spots to get a good greasy meal for under $5. Sure the exterior of King Burrito (see image above) may look like it is a run down pawn shop, but what you get inside....well it doesn't look much better. But the food and the service are a treat. The guys are friendly and definitely know how to make some damn tasty food. Everything on the menu is below $5, with most burritos in the $3.50 range. I suggest the hard tacos, the chile relleno burrito, the all-meat burrito, or the King Burrito. I have never been disappointed. I've also heard from a few trusted sources to try their "American" burgers. Do yourself a favor and check it out, they are open until 11pm almost everyday, but as Elizabeth might suggest, get your food to go.
Damn that took longer than expected to write, it is hard being on the internet longer than 30 minutes when you don't have to be.
May 6, 2010
From our correspondent in the wild
So I received a text from a friend last night. The text said: Hey first sighting of dumpy khaki butt in the wild! And there was the photo. I asked her to elaborate on the time and place and how it made her feel. The results you may read below. I like this. Feel free to join the foreign correspondent team. It makes me feel like the editor of a newspaper that reports only on frivolous things.
At first sighting of said pants* in the wild I was elated and shocked. The elation obviously was due to the timing of said sighting, and the relevance of their appearance. I was just entering the Tin Shed when it happened, and happened to be dining with my mother. The end result of the sighting, however, left me feeling as if one the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had just decided to dine with us. The gravity of the moment sunk in as I realized that only too soon they would be ubiquitous throughout Portland, and in fact as I stared at the unfortunate heart shaped mom-butt on an otherwise nicely shaped woman, there was no denying that Ms. Wrong was right on target, and there was no other option but to snap a picture.
*American Apparel Riding Pant
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